The God Beat
It had been more than a year since Fletcher Nye graduated from the University of California Southern Branch, a school that was later to become known as the University of California at Los Angeles. Since earning his degree in journalism, however, he had yet to find a job in his chosen field. He was still forced to eke out a living as a waiter at Cole's.
During that time Nye hounded the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Express, the Van Nuys Call, the Press-Telegram, the Los Angeles Examiner and every other newspaper in and around Los Angeles County—all to no avail. There was not a single reporting job available.
Just when the frustrated journalist was seriously contemplating a move to either New York City or Chicago, he received a telephone call from Mervyn Goldsborough, the managing editor of the Los Angeles Weekly Bulletin.
"One of my reporters just announced his retirement," Mervyn said. "If you're interested in filling the position, stop by my office sometime today and we can talk about it."
The young waiter immediately notified his supervisor, left the restaurant and headed for the newspaper's downtown office, only stopping at his small studio apartment to change his clothes.
Fletcher knew it would be an entry level position. After all, he could hardly expect to walk into a job as a feature writer with no reporting experience. It did not matter what the situation was as long as he got his foot in the door. He was a hard worker and was willing to advance up the ladder of journalistic success one rung at a time.
"You really are quite the eager beaver," Mervyn said with a laugh when his secretary showed Fletcher into his office. "I really didn't expect you until later this afternoon."
"If this time is inconvenient for you, I can always come back later," Fletcher offered.
"No. Now is fine. Take a seat."
Nye squeezed the arms of the chair to keep his hands from trembling with nervousness.
"I see you graduated with honors," Goldsborough noted, referring to the young man's resume. "And your professors spoke very highly of you when I contacted them for a reference."
"I'm glad to hear that."
"I'm willing to give you chance to prove your reporting skills. Naturally, you won't be making much money at first."
"I don't care if I get paid at all!" Fletcher cried enthusiastically.
"You say that now," Mervyn teased, "but in another six months, you'll be complaining about how small your paycheck is."
"When do I start?"
"Don't you want to know something about the job first?"
"As long as it's a journalism job, I don't care. Hell, I'll even write obituaries."
"I'm assigning you to the God beat, son. From there, you'll have to work your way up to obituaries," the editor declared facetiously.
"The God beat?"
"Yeah. You cover religious news: parish picnics, raffles, activities of the missionaries, the appointment of new pastors—that sort of thing. In short, any items related to the area's churches."
"I think it only fair to tell you that I'm not a religious man," Fletcher said.
"Yeah? And I like a few good, stiff drinks now and then, but it doesn't stop me from making sure that the Women's Christian Temperance Union meetings are faithfully covered by this paper. One good thing about working in the world of journalism: you don't have to believe in or agree with something in order to write about it."
* * *
In May 1926 Fletcher Nye was still working the God beat, chomping at the bit for something better to write about than the latest spaghetti dinner fundraiser, the appointment of a new choir director or the formation of a Bible study group.
He was writing several paragraphs on the Reverend "Fighting Bob" Shuler's latest rant against pornography in the movie industry when Rudy Van Der Zee, the reporter who covered the crime beat, paid him a visit.
"Did you hear about Sister Aimee?" Rudy asked him.
Fletcher rolled his eyes. Everyone in L.A. knew about Aimee Semple McPherson, the Pentecostal evangelist who founded the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.
"What stunt did she pull this time?"
Sister Aimee was known to perform unusual and often spectacular exploits to promote her message including dropping written Bible tracts from an airplane, having a football player from the University of Southern California score a touchdown for Jesus and asking an LAPD cop to ride into her $1.5 million, 5,300-seat Angelus Temple on his motorcycle to arrest sin.
"She's not up to anything this time. It seems Sister Aimee is missing and believed to be dead."
"Why are you giving me this information?" Fletcher asked. "Isn't this something you would normally cover?"
"I'm talking about an accident, not a crime," Rudy replied. "Mrs. McPherson went swimming down at Ocean Beach Park and hasn't been seen since. Her mother, Minnie Kennedy, made an announcement to her daughter's congregation to the effect that 'the Sister is with Jesus.'"
"So God's Little Child is believed to have drowned?" Nye said with a cynical laugh. "I'm surprised she can't walk on water."
"Since you're assigned to the God beat, I was sure this is something you'd want to cover."
"Thanks. I'll go see what search efforts are being made. Then I'll write about the usual biographical information: her two husbands, her days of shaking a tambourine for the Salvation Army, the so-called miracles."
"So-called? Come on," Van Der Zee teased. "You mean you don't believe she can make the lame walk and the blind see?"
"Sister Aimee is the head of a massive organization that includes more than two hundred affiliated churches, a rescue mission, radio station KFSG, an entire publications division and even an orchestra! She also owns a mansion near MGM studios. Now, I may not be an expert on theology, but I'm pretty sure all Jesus owned was a robe and a pair of sandals."
Despite his dislike of the celebrity evangelist's flamboyant revival meetings, Fletcher faithfully reported the massive, if fruitless, search efforts to recover the body as well as the elaborate memorial service held for McPherson.
Then three days after her faithful followers mourned her passing, Sister Aimee unexpectedly showed up alive and well in Douglas, Arizona, claiming she had been seized in California, chloroformed and then held against her will and tortured in a shack in Mexico.
Later that same day, Fletcher walked into his editor's office, holding several typed sheets of paper in his hand.
"Is that the article on Sister Aimee's kidnapping?" Mervyn asked.
"It is. I've included all the pertinent details the preacher's press agent released."
"Good."
"I've also written a second one. You might want to take a look at it."
As the editor read through Fletcher's second article, he raised his eyebrows in astonishment. It claimed Sister Aimee's account of being kidnapped was false, that the evangelist was actually in Carmel-by-the-Sea the entire time, shacked up with Kenneth Ormiston, a married engineer who worked at her radio station.
"Where did you get this story from?" he asked.
"A confidential source."
"Is it trustworthy?"
"Completely."
"I'm going to run this one," Mervyn said, holding up the kidnapping story. "The God beat is not a place for investigative journalism."
Fletcher was crushed. He had an inside scoop on what could prove to be the juiciest story in months, and it wouldn't be printed.
"This one," the editor continued, holding up the second article, "will appear on the first page."
The reporter's disappointment abruptly changed to disbelief and then joy.
"One thing, though," Mervyn added. "I don't want your name on it. You never know what kind of repercussions an article like this could cause. We'll have to think of a pen name, a nom de plume, if you will. I got it. Doubting Thomas. Yeah, I like that. Doubting Thomas it is."
* * *
When the Weekly Bulletin broke the story of Sister Aimee's illicit affair, the resultant scandal rocked Los Angeles. Although the evangelist initially denied the accusations, claiming they were the "work of the devil," the police were able to discredit her kidnapping tale and find evidence that supported Doubting Thomas's version of events.
After overwhelming approval of the article by the Bulletin's readers, Mervyn Goldsborough called his God beat reporter into his office.
"Congratulations! This paper has never had such an immediate and favorable reaction to a story before. I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me the identity of your source?" the editor asked.
"I can't."
"All right. I won't pressure you then. I don't suppose this source has any other leads you could pursue?"
Fletcher gave a half smile, and replied, "As a matter of fact ...."
"If it's half as good as the Sister Aimee exposé, then you have my blessing to run with it."
Doubting Thomas's next article dealt with Aimee Semple McPherson's rival, Fighting Bob Shuler. The Virginia-born minister preached against Catholics, Jews, African Americans, the Hollywood community, motion pictures, politicians, police officials and Darwin's theory of evolution, at the same time supporting the white supremacy philosophy of the Ku Klux Klan. Shuler, like Sister Aimee, owned his own radio station and was America's first broadcast evangelist, spreading his word to large numbers of listeners.
When Fletcher wrote an article exposing the reverend as the bigot he was rather than a dedicated reformer, people began to see Shuler in a new light. Furthermore, when he ran for the United States Senate under the Prohibition ticket, Fighting Bob lost to Democratic candidate, William G. McAdoo. Only one year before the elections, the Federal Radio Commission revoked the evangelist's broadcast license.
Needless to say, the article was another feather in the cap of Doubting Thomas.
Unfortunately, as Fletcher devoted more time to his investigative reporting, he had less time to spend with his friends and fiancée.
"I don't understand why it takes so much of your time to write about church activities," Rita complained when he broke another date with her.
"It's not that aspect of my job that's so time-consuming."
He then confessed that he was the man behind the Doubting Thomas articles.
"You're the one who destroyed Sister Aimee's reputation?" she asked with disbelief.
"Don't tell me you were one of her followers."
"No, of course not! You can't think I'm one of those mindless sheep. I just had no idea you were writing legitimate news articles."
"Well, I am. And Sister Aimee and Fighting Bob Shuler are just the beginning. I hope to take on everyone who uses religion to dupe unsuspecting followers out of their hard-earned money. To me, these high profile evangelists are no better than confidence men and women."
"Aren't you afraid of the backlash? If you start exposing these men and women as quacks and criminals, people may eventually lose faith in all religious leaders."
"Then let the genuine men of God reach out to the disillusioned followers and show them the way."
* * *
Doubting Thomas's next article was devoted to Guy and Edna Ballard, the founders of the Church of I Am. Their religion, centered on a deity known as St. Germaine who gave off a violet ray of supernatural power, had tens of thousands of followers. Religion was not the Ballards' only racket. They also sold products such as New Age Cold Cream. Their questionable business practices eventually led to their being indicted for mail fraud.
"Another excellent job," Mervyn congratulated his reporter. "I assume this was also a follow-up on a tip from your confidential informant?"
"It was."
"That makes three. Are there any more?"
"There's the Tabernacle of the Third Coming in which a woman dressed as a man preaches the holy crusade against salt," Fletcher replied.
"Salt? You're joking, right?"
"No. I guess that was the eleventh commandment: thou shall not eat salt."
"Anything else?"
"The Temple Moderne where the faithful are taught brain-breathing and the secrets of the Aztecs."
"Jesus Christ!" the editor exclaimed. "No pun intended."
Fletcher and his editor decided the subject of Doubting Thomas's next article would be the Blackburn Cult, also known as the Divine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven or simply the Great Eleven Club. The cult's founder, May Otis Blackburn, believed she was charged by the Archangel Gabriel to teach the mysteries of heaven and earth not only through animal sacrifice and copious amounts of sex but also by bilking thousands of dollars from its followers.
In 1928 police went to the home of the Rhoads family and discovered a refrigerated sleeping chamber beneath one of the bedrooms that contained the body of their sixteen-year-old daughter. The corpse was sprinkled with salt and spices, and seven dead dogs were placed around her. The parents confessed that May Otis Blackburn had assured them that their daughter would be resurrected when Gabriel came to earth.
As if this scandal was not bad enough, several of the cult's leaders were indicted for theft and investigated in connection with the disappearance of a number of its followers. May herself was charged with twelve counts of grand theft and was imprisoned for stealing forty thousand dollars from one of her group members.
"How did you learn about this bunch?" asked Rita, who had no knowledge of her fiancé's confidential source.
"Not long after I was assigned to the God beat, someone came to my office and asked me to help expose religious charlatans. He provided me with all the information on Aimee Semple McPherson, Bob Shuler, the Ballards and May Otis Blackburn."
"What is he, some kind of a minister or priest?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you. One of the canons of journalism is to protect the identity of our sources."
"Who am I going to tell?" Rita exclaimed with a pronounced pout, clearly hurt by what she saw as Fletcher's lack of faith in her.
"You want to know something my source told me in confidence?" he asked, knowing a juicy bit of gossip would restore her good humor. "There's a religious group over on Santee Street where women are forced to speak in tongues, perform devil dances and engage in soul mating with spiritual husbands."
"You're making that up!"
"I swear to God!"
Considering the number of false prophets that were popping up all over Los Angeles like a swarm of locusts, the journalist wondered if that particular oath still held much weight.
* * *
Although the God beat section was still a regular feature of the Los Angeles Weekly Bulletin, it was a series of anonymous interns who wrote the church announcements and legitimate religious news. After the Doubting Thomas article on May Otis Blackburn, Fletcher Nye's full-time assignment was to crack the "religion racket" and to investigate men such as Billy Sunday, the former baseball outfielder turned evangelist. Although no sexual or criminal scandal ever touched his ministry, Sunday made over eight hundred dollars a day for his sermons when the average working man barely made that amount in an entire year.
Since he no longer had to divide his workday between two assignments, Fletcher had the time for a social life. He and Rita were married—in a civil service rather than at a church.
"Do you honestly believe the judge who performed the ceremony is any less crooked than one of your greedy preachers?" the bride asked.
"Probably not," the reporter replied. "I'm sure politicians and lawyers are just as hypocritical and avaricious, but at least they're not claiming to be doing God's work."
Rita lifted her eyebrows with surprise.
"Are you defending God? And all the while I thought you were an atheist."
"My lips are sealed. My parents told me never to discuss politics, sex or religion."
"And you decided to become a journalist! What were you going to write about, the weather?"
"When I was hired by the Bulletin, Mervyn Goldsborough gave me a great piece of advice that I've lived by ever since: You don't have to believe in or agree with something in order to write about it."
Fletcher took two weeks off from his writing in order to go to Atlantic City for his honeymoon. When he returned to the West Coast, he went back to his office at the paper while Rita took on the responsibility of house hunting.
As his wife examined bungalows and Spanish style homes, Fletcher wrote an article on Krishna Venta's cult, Fountain of the World. Although the group often helped feed the poor, give shelter to the homeless and aid emergency relief groups, Venta was killed by a suicide bomber who claimed that Krishna was guilty of such crimes as mishandling cult funds and engaging in intimate relations with members' wives.
He followed this article up with one on Arthur Bell, a science fiction writer who established the Mankind United sect. Bell warned his followers that a malevolent conspiracy existed in which Hidden Rulers, who were aliens to our planet, were responsible for war, poverty and injustice. Meanwhile, Sponsors, also aliens, were about to create a world-wide utopia. Although his followers never amounted to more than a few thousand, Bell still managed to afford several luxurious homes, be seen in the most popular nightspots and spend cash freely, receiving an estimated fifty thousand dollars a year in tax-free income.
* * *
By the 1960s, Doubting Thomas was working for a national news service and still going strong. Since his first article on Sister Aimee appeared in 1926, Fletcher Nye had exposed more than two hundred spurious evangelists, cult leaders and revivalists. At a time when many people were thinking of retirement, he still envisioned his career going on for at least another decade.
In the summer of 1968, he received word that Mervyn Goldsborough, his old friend and one-time editor, had been admitted to the UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica. The man, well into his eighties, was dying of cancer and was not expected to last much longer.
Fletcher, who was to go on a cruise with his wife, had to postpone the vacation.
"I had no idea he was so sick. I've got to see him," he explained.
"Of course, you do," Rita agreed. "The trip can wait. You owe everything to him."
"I can't believe he's that sick. We had lunch together three months ago, and he looked in perfect health. He must have known about the cancer then. Why didn't he say anything to me?"
"He probably didn't want to worry you."
When Fletcher walked through the door into Mervyn's hospital room, he was stunned by the old man's appearance. He looked as though he had lost more than fifty pounds and aged at least a decade in the past three months.
"Are you awake?" the journalist whispered, not wanting to disturb him if he was sleeping.
The patient's eyes fluttered open.
"Fletcher, my boy," Mervyn said in a hoarse voice. "I'm glad I get to see you one last time."
For the first time in his life, words failed the journalist.
"I've always admired you," the dying man confessed. "You have more integrity in your little finger than most men have in their entire bodies."
"I was just doing my job," Fletcher said, embarrassed by the praise. "And you were a constant inspiration to me. You were the best newspaperman I'd ever met—and a good friend."
When Mervyn smiled, he resembled his younger, healthier self.
"I have only a few days left," he finally announced. "Would you humor a dying man?"
It did not take a mind reader to know what was coming, and Fletcher was prepared for it.
"I know I shouldn't ask you, but I must. For forty years I've wanted to know. Who is Doubting Thomas's confidential source?"
"Do you remember Rudy Van Der Zee who used to work at the Bulletin back in the Twenties?"
"Yeah, sure. He worked the crime beat, and then he moved back east just before the market crashed. He was your source?" the dying editor asked, clearly disappointed.
"No. He was just the one who told me that Aimee Semple McPherson was believed to have drowned while out for a swim. When I was at my typewriter, writing the usual biographical piece on the missing woman, a stranger came into my office, claiming that Sister Aimee was alive and well and that he knew where she was and who she was with. At first I was skeptical, but then ...."
"Well?" the editor pressed when the journalist stopped speaking for several minutes.
"He told me that he was an angel."
Goldsborough's eyes closed and his head fell back on the pillow.
"If you don't want to reveal your source, then just say so. There's no need for you to ...."
"I'm telling you the truth, Merv," Fletcher insisted. "I didn't believe him then any more than you believe me now. He suggested I give him a brief physical examination, which I reluctantly did. He had no heartbeat, no pulse, and he never breathed. Then he took a knife out of his jacket pocket and sliced his wrist. Not only did he not bleed, but within seconds the wound was completely healed. He told me his body was just a shell for my benefit and that it was filled with the spirit of God."
"Assuming what you say is true, what was his reason for coming to you?"
"He said he wanted my help to rid the world of the parasites that used religion for their own greedy purposes."
"If he was an angel, couldn't he just bring down the wrath of God on them?" the editor asked.
"He told me angels often worked with men and that I was his crusader. I still only half-believed him, but he knew things. During our first meeting he told me not only about McPherson but also about Shuler, the Ballards and at least a dozen others. I swear he talked for hours, yet when he left my office only a few minutes had passed."
"You've seen him again?"
"Yes, whenever I run out of material, he visits me. The last time I saw him was about eighteen months ago. He told me, among other things, to keep an eye on a cult called the Process Church of the Final Judgment run by a man named Robert Moor, who calls himself Robert DeGrimston. The group claims to worship both Christ and Satan."
As Mervyn listened to his friend's words, his eyes began to grow dull with pain, and he frequently grimaced.
"Are you all right?" Fletcher asked, finally noticing the other man's discomfort.
"My painkillers are beginning to wear off. I wonder where the nurse is with my medication."
Fletcher leaned forward and, smiling beneficently, took the old man's hand in his. A warm, tingling sensation passed from the journalist's body into the former editor's. The pain faded, leaving behind a peaceful, contented sensation.
"You took away the pain!" Goldsborough declared with amazement.
"It's one of the little perks of being a crusader."
"Thank you, my friend."
"You're welcome."
Moments before Mervyn Goldsborough drifted off into a peaceful slumber, he cast his eyes upon Fletcher Nye for the last time. Perhaps it was a trick of the overhead light—or maybe not—but it appeared as though a glowing halo encircled his head.
* * *
Rita Nye lived to the age of ninety-two before passing away in her sleep. The couple's two children eventually retired, one to Florida, the other to Arizona, to enjoy their golden years. Fletcher's five grandchildren were all leading happy, productive lives. One was a doctor, one a lawyer, one a teacher, one an engineer and the last an accountant for a Fortune 500 company. Not one of them had wanted to follow in their grandfather's footsteps and became a journalist.
As for Fletcher himself, he had taken a page out of Sister Aimee's playbook and went swimming in the Pacific Ocean, never to emerge again. And like the scandalized evangelist, his disappearance was nothing more than a cover.
In a log cabin, located in a sparsely populated area in northern Maine, there lived a man at the ripe old age of one hundred and twenty-two who continued to write his Doubting Thomas articles. Oddly enough, no one at the news agency ever inquired about either the identity or the age of the man behind the pen name. As long as he continued to write, the articles would get published without question.
Fletcher, who did not look a day over sixty, turned on his Toshiba laptop.
Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? he thought as he waited for Windows to boot up.
When he clicked on the desktop shortcut to the Doubting Thomas folder, he looked with a profound sense of accomplishment at the growing number of Microsoft Word files within it. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and their Praise the Lord Club. David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. Marshall Applewhite and Heaven's Gate. Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. Creflo Dollar and the World Changers Church International. The names went on and on. Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Bishop Eddie Long, Kent Hovind, Robert Tilton, Peter Popoff, Warren Jeffs ....
There seemed to be no end to the men and women posing as religious leaders but who are nothing more than wolves in sheep's clothing. Furthermore, their sins are legion: hypocrisy, racism, suicide, pedophilia, homophobia, larceny and even murder.
And I've still uncovered only the tip of the iceberg, Fletcher thought as he opened a Word file and began to type.
Image in upper left corner is of Aimee Semple McPherson.
All of the evangelists, cults and churches in this article are real. (You can't make this stuff up!) One of the sources I used in researching this story was Troy Taylor's 'Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Bloody Hollywood.'
Salem once joined a religious cult because one of its practices involved eating large quantities of fish.
