Though most of the nation's attention this weekend seemed to be focused on the Brian Nicholls story in Atlanta, I was struck by the Wisconsin church shooting that left seven dead.

The congregation that was hit was connected with the Living Church of God, one of the half-dozen offshoots of the old Worldwide Church of God.  Worldwide began with the late Herbert W. Armstrong, who mixed the strange theology of British-Israelism with a strict adherence to Old Testament law (circumcision, dietary law, the works.)  Worldwide folk rejected other Christians as hopelessly compromised with the world.  The church peaked in popularity in the 1970s, and then lost followers in the wake of sexual scandals and failed millennial prophecies.  The church was centered here in Pasadena from 1956 until the early 1990s, where they built Ambassador College and Ambassador Auditorium.  Thousands of followers came to Pasadena to be near Armstrong and his church.

In the late 1980s and early 90s, following Armstrong's death, the church was torn apart in a series of schisms.  Joseph Tkach took over the main branch of the church, moved it into the theological mainstream, and made it virtually indistinguishable from countless other evangelical ministries.  But others clung to the old Armstrongian beliefs in mandatory tithing, Saturday worship, the observance of Old Testament feasts, and so forth.  Of course, these schismatics could not agree amongst themselves, and split again and again.  The Living Church of God (the denomination of the victims of Saturday's shooting) was one of only eight different offshoots of the old Worldwide Church.  In addition to Living (as it is usually known), the other large branch of the schismatic churches is the United Church of God.

I'm struck by all this for personal reasons.  I can't even begin to count how many students I've taught these past 12 years at PCC who come out of one or another of these traditions.  I've taught "Living" students and "United" students and a few from the smaller offshoots.  Time and again, I've heard stories about the chaotic years of the late 1980s and 1990s as families were torn apart all across Pasadena by the schisms.  A few years ago, I had one girl whose entire family had gone with the Tkach clan into the mainstream Worldwide Church; she alone, at 19, was clinging to "Living".  She had left her parents' home and moved in with an older church couple.  She took time off to travel for the feasts of Trumpets and Tabernacles; she was very proud of her faith and very bitter at her entire family for what she saw as their collective apostasy.  A year or two later, when I was teaching on our Florence study abroad program, I had a young woman who was very active in "United."  The only fellow church-members in Italy were in Milan; every Friday afternoon she took the train from Florence to Milan to spend the weekend with them, returning late Sunday.  Her faith was humbling, even as the theology was positively bizarre.  Both young women have since left the church; I recently ran into one at a restaurant she manages.  She looks much happier; a load has been lifted from her shoulders.  I asked her about the church, and she said she had been grateful that it had been there for her in her adolescence, but that she had moved beyond it now.  I told her I was happy for her.

I still run into quite a few of these heirs to Armstrongism.   They always tend to show up in my Western Civ classes, usually when we are talking about Paul and circumcision (or dietary laws.)  They do their utmost to convince me that Paul didn't mean what most Christians think he meant when he proclaimed observance of the Law in these matters no longer necessary.  I always smile, affirm them, and invite them to come and chat in my office.  They've usually got a good story to tell, and they are usually with United or Living.  They're bright kids, more often than not, and I enjoy their participation and their challenge.

And when I heard it was a Living church that was the target of Saturday's shooting, I thought of their faces.