CHAPTER 16

Three women told Schoenheit his life would be in danger if he released this paper. It sounded melodramatic, but he reasoned that greater men than the trustees had killed to cover up their adultery -- King David, for one. He sent copies to a few trusted friends, eight or ten, in case anything happened to him.

Then he took his bombshell and practically defused it himself, laying it on the desk of his boss, Walter Cummins. He was following the appropriate channel. He waited for Cummins to get back to him. Nothing happened for weeks.

Then a woman who had helped Schoenheit write the paper went to Ralph Dubofsky, the Trunk coordinator, and said Schoenheit had written this adultery paper and given it to Walter Cummins, and he was just sitting on it. Ralph went to Walter and asked him what he was going to do about it, noting that other people already had copies.

"Walter Cummins went to the trustees and said this thing could blow up in our face," Schoenheit said. "So they fired me."

It was the worst thing they could have done. Schoenheit himself says he would have followed his superiors' instructions on what to do about the paper. It wasn't the kind of thing The Way Magazine would publish. It wasn't a book. It wasn't a tape. It was just a research paper. Hundreds of research papers were written every year by the graduating Corps. It wasn't like the ministry had to do anything about it. Cummins could have told Schoenheit: "You're right. It's a good paper. It's biblically accurate. But I don't see any forum for releasing it." The Way could easily have swept Schoenheit under the rug.

Instead, it made him a celebrity. By answering his volunteer research project with a pink slip, the ministry gave his cause far more publicity than it would have won otherwise.

The official reason he was fired was disobedience. ("Disobedience to the disobedient ones?" marveled my roommate David when we heard of this.) Chris Geer had ruled that no new research was to be undertaken at this time. Schoenheit's response to that was that if it was "new research" to claim that adultery was wrong, "we were in serious trouble."

Walter Cummins finally responded by saying angrily that the ministry didn't need a 50-page paper saying adultery was wrong. Everyone in the department was supposed to be doing Corps Night research or other approved projects. Schoenheit was fired for taking off on his own trip.

So Schoenheit, who would otherwise have proceeded quietly with approved research, started Xeroxing copies of his manuscript by the dozen, sometimes 50 at a time, and sending them all over the country.

© Karl Kahler 1999