IV. LOVE’S LABORS WON: INTIMACY, AFFILIATION AND ANIMA

It is the almost universal testimony of those closest to Herbert Armstrong in his years of high achievement that he was extremely fortunate in his first marriage to Loma Dillon, an Iowa schoolteacher and third cousin. Testimonies could be multiplied to support this conclusion. Armstrong was on a business visit from Chicago passing by his aunt’s farm in Motor, in January, 1917, when Loma came bounding in. “I had noticed she was something of a tomboy – active, very alert. Whatever she did she did quickly. I learned later that her brothers dubbed her with two nicknames – ‘She-bang’ and ‘Cyclone!’ She was full of fun, yet serious – with the unspoiled wholesomeness of an Iowa country girl. And most important of all, strength of character.”

Herbert Armstrong would always write fondly and fervently about Loma. “My darling wifey” he would call her in letters later published in The Plain Truth. “She seemed to have high ideals, and I discovered that she was seriously concerned about religious truth – more so than I. I had no interest in religion.” Yet if he had no interest in religion, Armstrong certainly believed marriage was till death do us part. “I was born of solid old Quaker stock. I was brought up from childhood to believe that marriage was for life, and divorce was a thing unheard of in our family.” They would live together for 49 ½ years until her death in 1967. Loma would give birth to four children over the years, two girls, Beverly and Dorothy, and two sons, Richard David, and the later well-known evangelist, Garner Ted Armstrong (b. 1930).

Erikson writes of Stage Six, the Intimacy vs. Isolation period, that “the young adult, emerging from the search for and insistence on identity, is eager and willing to fuse his identity with that of others. He is ready for intimacy, that is, the capacity to commit himself to concrete affiliations and partnerships and to develop the ethical strength to abide by such commitments, even though they may call for significant sacrifices and compromises.” Herbert Armstrong’s human spirit fused as completely with Loma’s as was possible. They were a great “fit.” He was solicitous of her needs. He loved to fly, for example, but he would switch his schedules to assuage his wife’s airline jitters. She was the one who had the noteworthy dream, in the first year of their marriage in 1917, that they were both called to “do important work preparing for Christ’s coming” – a dream the young Chicago up-and-comer promptly brushed aside. 29 It was to her and the children and her father’s farm he turned when his Chicago advertising/trade rep business finally fell apart in 1922. She was the one who suggested they try their luck out west, in Oregon, and he readily acceded. She was also the direct instrument responsible for his conversion in the notable incident when, in 1926, through a Bible study with their next door Church of God (Seventh Day) neighbors, Loma announced she was going to begin keeping the Saturday Sabbath.

In all of this it would seem that Loma fulfilled what C.G. Jung referred to as the “anima” archetype in Herbert Armstrong’s life. As Jungian scholar, Ann Belford Ulanov, writes:

A man’s choice of his girlfriend or wife reflects the image of his anima…The anima personifies the contrasexual elements in a man, expressing the so-called feminine qualities of tenderness, sensitivity, indefiniteness, feeling, receptivity, elusiveness, jealousy, and creative containing and yielding. The anima, then, is an archetype symbolizing the feminine elements in a man’s psyche. 30

The Church of God (Seventh Day) was a tiny sect of sabbath-keepers descended from the Millerites. Herbert Armstrong was first enraged at his wife’s affection for the Sabbath. He felt he could never rebuild his business with this weight around his neck. Yet the anima archetype is not to be easily rejected. He angrily threatened divorce except he would give Loma one last chance. He would launch an independent study of the Bible and show that Christians were commanded to keep Sunday, not Saturday. On those terms of reference, he could see enough sabbathkeeping references (Acts 13:42 and Acts 16:13, for example) – that his final acceptance of Saturday as the correct day of worship for Christians was indeed, for him, a logical response. The Chicago narcissist in him knew what this meant:

“Now came the greatest inner battle of my life. To accept this truth meant – so I supposed – to cut me off from all former friends, acquaintances and business associates. I had come to meet some of the independent Sabbathkeepers down around Salem and the Willamette Valley [of Oregon]. Some of them were what I then, in my pride and conceit, regarded as backwoods ‘hillbillies’...To accept this truth meant to throw in my lot for life with a class of people I had always looked on as inferior. I later learned that God looks on the heart, and these humble people were the real salt of the earth. But I was then still looking on the outward appearance.”

As Armstrong admits, he had been beaten down by the flash depression of 1920. He had seen the Dreiserian side of the achievement myth. This helped set the stage for his conversion:

“And I acknowledged: ‘I’m nothing but a burned–out old hunk of junk.’ I realized I had been a swellheaded egotistical jackass. Finally, in desperation, I threw myself on God’s mercy. I said to God that I knew now that I was nothing…My life was worth nothing more to me. I said that I knew now that I had nothing to offer Him – but if He would forgive me – if He could have any use whatsoever for such a worthless dreg of humanity, that He could have my life; I knew it was worthless, but if He could do anything with it, he could have it – I was willing to give this worthless self to him – I wanted to accept Jesus Christ as personal Savior!” 31

For the next 40 years Loma would be at his side, anima-like, as they worked together in the humble work of a rural pastor and later as noted institution builders. Loma had provided crucial centering for Armstrong as he faced Stage Six. Now, with both firmly in the middle of Stage Seven, Adulthood, Erikson’s Generativity vs. Stagnation phase, other spiritual factors would come into play.

ENDNOTES

29 Herbert Armstrong, HWA, 1967, pages 207-209. Especially in the early days of their ministry Loma would receive many healings, dreams, insights, and premonitions and near-visions. This was more fully told in The Plain Truth episodes of the Autobiography from 1957 to about 1966.

30 Ann Ulanov, The Feminine in Jungian Psychology and in Christian Theology (Evanston: Northwest University Press, 1971), pages 38-39.

31 Herbert W. Armstrong, The Autobiography, pages 306-309.