Ricky Guthrie's UPC & Other Oneness Experience

My name is Rick Guthrie. I became acquainted with the Oneness movement in 1970 in Houston, TX.  The group I was with was called the Apostolic Ministers Fellowship. It was an offshoot of UPCI which split in the 60's over silly ideas as I see them today.

The church I attended for 8 years was very hard line holiness. Women had to wear their hair up at all times including the young women and girls. Only girls below 15 could wear their hair down. Men and boys had to wear long sleeves at all times in public.

I can remember that women had to wear their dresses 3 to 4 inches below the knee and even then I can remember the pastor telling the husbands to measure their wive's dresses.

Men and boys had to wear their hair real short. It could not touch their ears or collars.

Men could not wear very many colored clothing and absolutely no colored underwear for that was too effeminate. Buckles on men's shoes was also considered effeminate and so was using hairspray or getting your hair styled. You could go to a barber and get it cut but you could not have it styled.

One incident that was so ludicrous was that some of us young men wanted to go swimming at Lake Houston. There were private areas at this time. Some of the women decided they wanted to go too so they took us. We went to one area and they went to another. Mind you we were all fully dressed. We had on pants and shirts and the women had on dresses. This is what we wore in the water since women were around and they wore since males were around.

One of the older women became afraid that one of us young men might get hurt so the women told us to come where they were. Again we are fully dressed in the water. Well, when the pastor found out he threatened to disfellowship us for mix bathing.

This is how legalistic he was. I could understand this if we had been wearing shorts and no shirts and the women bikinis or something, but with all of us totally fully dressed in the water, I look back at this incident and found it totally ridiculous.

I have a lot of friends who now go to no churches because they have been so brainwashed they think they cannot enter Heaven unless they obey all these commandments so they just don't serve God. What a shame.

I finally got away from the influence of these people and started reading my Bible and started seeing how wrong these teachings were but because this hurt me mentally I quit going to any church.

When my wife and I lost our son at birth, I felt I needed to get back to God but the only thing I knew was this messsage so this time I went into the UPCI.

Yet, everytime I prayed I felt like I was washing my feet with my socks on. I kept asking God to make me realize I was wrong by going into UPC.

Yes, again I followed the standards. But something was different. I kept feeling this was wrong. After five years God sent an intrusion into my life. The pastor of the church I went to lied to me repeatedly about certain circumstances and mistreated me after I had kept the church clean for years and did a lot of work for him. I had also helped lead the choir and music ministry.

I again started studying the Word and realizing that these standards were not scriptural.

UPCI and other Holiness churches are not just abusive by their standards they teach. They demand absolute obedience to the ministry, right or wrong.

They are dictatorial. Also when you have a problem in your marriage, whether it is financial or something else, they always try to link it to sex.

Standards do not stop sin. It is what is in the heart that causes a person to sin or a man or a woman to lust or commit sexual sins. I can remember vividly hearing young Pentecostal men talking about young Pentecostal women in lustful tones. The fact that they were wearing long dresses did not deter these young men's lustful thoughts.

Standards do not stop sin but God's Spirit does. If God resides within you and you have a love for God and a desire to live for him you will wage a war to overcome sin. You will want to strive to live above sin. Yes, we fail but we have an advocate with God.

You see UPCI sees their salvation in outward appearance even though they deny this vehemently. They claim standards have nothing to do with salvation but with pleasing God. Yet don't follow them and see how fast they condemn you to Hell's fire.

To me the UPCI considers the blood of Jesus only partially capable of  saving man. Paul declared that if we can save ourselves through our works and deeds, then Christ died in vain.

I know there are commandments and rules and regulations to be followed in the Christian walk, but these are plainly in the Bible and need no man's interpretation. I am not a liberalist who says anything goes. I don't say something is sinful, then go out and do that something.

I believe the Bible is full of moderation. I believe Christians should be moderate. Right down the middle. Neither extreme left or extreme right.

Posted August 8, 1998

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