Page 90 of The Confidant
“Yes.”
“And it was, like, a commandment from God?”
“I guess.” I shrugged. “Back then it was, anyway.”
At least…that was how Samuel Williams had presented it. Like it was only happening because he’d been commanded by God to take multiple women and teenagers into his bed.
A flash of anger passed through me as I thought about the disgusting things that wolf in sheep’s clothing had done in the name of God.
“That’s weird that my dad never told me about them,” Scarlett said, like she was actually considering that the story could be true despite never hearing about it in church.
“It’s not exactly part of the history that The Fold is proud of,” I said.
“Why did they do it?”
Because Samuel Williams was a married man and fell in love with his teenage foster daughter and wanted an excuse to be with her.
“He said it was a commandment from Jehovah,” I said instead. “Something about building a stronger kingdom of God since the more women Samuel took as spiritual partners, the more his special, more righteous bloodline would continue.”
No matter that this new“revelation” didn’t even become known about untilafterhe got caught having his first affair.
It was all extremely suspicious to me, but his excuses worked for a lot of the believers back then who had already been manipulated by the High Priest time and time again.
Once you learn you can swindle people, you tend to believe you’re untouchable.
“They stopped doing it though, right?” Scarlett asked, like she needed the reassurance that the modern church wouldn’t continue to do something that was so obviously wrong.
“They officially denounced the practice.”
Though there was evidence that even though they publicly denounced it, one of the later High Priests told his descendants to continue the practice in secret. Saying it was still the Higher Law and a way to ensure Samuel’s bloodline continued so that the right High Priest was in office for the second coming.
This wasn’t common knowledge among the members of The Fold, but there were break-off sects that formed here and there when the more stalwart believers came across this information and wanted to live the Higher Law.
But those sects weren’t very big—not compared to the millions of members that The Fold had.
The people in the break-off groups mostly kept to themselves on the outskirts of society while members of The Fold were able to blend in more easily.
Sure, the Fold’s beliefs were slightly peculiar to outsiders, but they weren’t as obviously dangerous—the guilt and shame that came along with the current teachings weren’t seen as dangerous, anyway. Even if constantly wondering if I was good enough to make it to the highest level of heaven hadn’t been great for my anxiety-prone nature.
“Did you read about this on that website you sent me a link to?”
“Yes…” I said the word slowly, worried that she would automatically discount it since it wasn’t a church-approved resource. “But I also came across this information when I was reading the church history essays. The footnotes and original sources actually have a lot of details about it.”
“Okay…” She let out a shuddering sigh—almost like she was scared and didn’t want to think that the church had been keeping secrets from her. “Do you think my dad knows about this?”
I nodded slowly. “I talked about it with him when I first started doing my research last summer.” I’d hoped Pastor Caldwell who was so well versed in scripture would have some magic words of wisdom that could explain away all of the things I found so morally wrong about the church’s founder. “I don’t know how much he’s actually looked into things, though.”
He said that other people had come to him with difficult topics before. But in our conversation, it sounded like he had mostly read the pro-Fold historian’s arguments to make it okay for him.
Which I understood. He was a pastor. His entire world revolved around this church.
His financial wellbeing. His reputation.
He’d been defending it for decades. It wasn’t an easy thing to question when it literally affected every single aspect of your life.
Plus, sometimes it was easier not to pull back the curtain and see what was back there. Sometimes you just knew that what was hidden back there was ugly and that it could stir things up, and so you'd purposely decide to ignore it to maintain the status quo.
Most people didn’t want to intentionally upend their lives or belief system. We already had so much to deal with in life without looking for more to trouble us.
