Raising the Ruins (31 page)

But that, Mark explained, was ruled “on the assumption that people would make those decisions to try to maximize the value of the work.”
¹⁷
In our case, of course, the
WCG
had been working for more than a decade to try to diminish the value of
Mystery of the Ages
and, in fact, deprive
everyone
from ever gaining access to the book.

Schwarzer then raised the question about church members and how the
WCG
and the
PCG
were competing for members in the “same market.”

“The members who are interested in the Philadelphia Church are completely separate from the members in the Worldwide,” Mark responded.

“They are using the same principles—they’re using
Mystery of the Ages
,”
Schwarzer said.

“The point is, your honor, Worldwide Church is
not
using
Mystery of the Ages
,”
said Mark.

Schwarzer fired back, “Not now—but they did to get a lot of members in the past.”

Mark responded,

That’s right, and they’ve lost more than half of their members after they did the about-face in doctrine, which the record shows is unprecedented in the history of religion. We’re not talking here about, they tinkered with this doctrine or they tinkered with that doctrine. No religious historian has been able to point to any church in the history of religion that has had a turn-about of this nature. Everything that made that church distinctive and fundamental has now been renounced. And it went from something way out of the mainstream of Christianity, now into just a regular old, mainstream Christian church. That’s never happened before, your honor. And so, therefore, the members are not the same.
¹⁸

As my father would later remark, “It was like listening to Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. I wanted to take notes, but couldn’t, for fear of missing one word.”

Judge Brunetti interjected to point out that this would be a much different case if the
WCG
still used
Mystery of the Ages
.
But since they weren’t, the question Brunetti asked is, can the copyright holder keep the work out of publication and stop the fair use of it?

Recipe for Terrorism

Mark explained that the copyright laws are in place so that authors can “retain the economic benefits from the fruits of their labors.” He said, “This is not a case where they are trying to get a return for their labors—it’s a case where they’re trying, based on their religious duty, to stop somebody else from using a work that is important to them.”

Schwarzer then jumped back into the fray, sounding more and more like an accomplice of Joe Jr.’s:

Suppose the book contained the recipe for building a nuclear weapon, and it’s out in publication—the author says,
My G-‑, I don’t want this floating around the world. I’m going to call back all the copies and destroy them.
… Now, does he have a right to prevent the fair use of that book because he thinks it’s his Christian duty to keep it out of publication?
¹⁹

This analogy angered my father. For Schwarzer to compare
Mystery of the Ages
to a plan for a nuclear weapon was a revealing swipe at Mr. Armstrong’s teachings. And yet this is the same man who, moments earlier, said the
WCG
and the
PCG
were competing for members in the
same market
.

We were fighting for a religious text—written by an ambassador for world peace who traveled the world to meet with dozens of presidents, prime ministers and members of royal families—that was repudiated by Tkachism. It’s a text that, notwithstanding the unprecedented transformation the
WCG
underwent, remains central to our religious practice. To compare that with a manual about how terrorists can produce nuclear weapons was terribly insulting.

Divine Inspiration

Judge Brunetti seemed satisfied with Mark’s explanation about the
WCG
’s renunciation of Mr. Armstrong’s teachings and that it tended to support our argument. He then asked for Mark to express his view on the economic benefit we were supposedly deriving from the distribution. That’s when Mark actually read what is printed on the slip mailed out with all copies of
Mystery of the Ages
—the one Allan said asked for donations in return. It says, “All of our materials are sent free of charge as a public service and it is our firm policy to never request donations or offerings at any time.” Mark added, “Now, how you can construe that as a solicitation of funds I don’t know.”

Schwarzer then spoke up to say that he accepted the fact that our primary reason for sending out
Mystery
was to spread our religious message. But he added that we
did
derive some economic benefit from the work—simply because we did not have the time and resources to write our own. That’s when Mark brought up the subject of divine inspiration. The
PCG
, he said,

believes that Mr. Armstrong was inspired by God when he wrote the book. There is no rewriting of the book that can happen. They believe that this is God’s word as was handed to Mr. Armstrong. So it’s not a question of,
Oh, we’re going to now make up some views that we think are like it
. Those are the views. And you can describe it either accurately or inaccurately, but those are the beliefs that they have and they can’t be rewritten.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Browne’s Rebuttal

In Allan’s rebuttal, he chose to answer the question about the effect the book had on their potential market. The markets for both churches are the same, Allan said.

They have many of our former members preaching there. We do believe that with our annotated version of the book, we will hopefully be able to get some of these members back. We also believe that they have used this book … to develop relationships with these other people—relationships that may transcend our ability to get these members back. That’s what it’s all about: Develop the relationship, and then once you develop the relationship, you start getting a stream of income, because they become a member.

If we can just get the annotated version into the hands of those who’ve left the
WCG
—then they’ll come back
.

Please.

Judge Brunetti saw right through it: “You seem to be arguing that the doctrine is very flexible and fungible, that all you have to do is mutate it a little bit and you get them back—is that right?”

Of course he didn’t mean
that
. “But we have evidence,” Allan said, “hard evidence, that says this is a market, these are people that we hope to get back into the fold.”

With that, Judge Tashima asked perhaps his best question of the day: So what if you do get them back? What would you do then? “Would you sell them a copy of the book?” Ah yes! The million-dollar question. Let’s assume you get them back. What then? Notice Allan Browne’s “hard evidence” response: “We would hope to have them become members again—and in the past, we did sell this book. When it first came out, we sold it in book stores. Mr. Armstrong did, for $14.95 a copy.
So that certainly is a possibility.”

A possibility? He concluded oral arguments by suggesting that the
WCG
wanted their former members back,
and that if they returned, they could
possibly purchase the original version
of
Mystery of the Ages
. As if this unprecedented doctrinal transformation had all been a simple misunderstanding.

At 11:45 that morning, the court stood in recess. Although we would not find out about their ruling for several more months, the three of them most likely voted on the case that afternoon, before turning it over to clerks to write up the opinions. It all seemed to happen so fast—as if they were hastily casting their votes on a case that meant everything to us.

Television Taping

Our television producer, Andrew Locher, was on hand during the trip so that we could double-up on productivity. We decided to tape a
Key of David
program across the freeway from Ambassador Auditorium that afternoon. My father spoke about Paul’s letter to the Colossian brethren. Chapter 1 of that book even speaks about a mystery that has been “hid from ages.”
²⁰
Tying this in with
Mystery of the Ages
,
my father thought it would be effective to deliver a message with Ambassador Auditorium in the background, since he intended to discuss a few details about the court case.

We set up our gear on the embankment beside the road, between the freeway entrance and a city street. According to Mr. Leap (the rest of us had our backs to the street), while we were taping Greg Albrecht pulled up in his car, stopped and rolled down his window. He sat there awhile to watch and then shook his head and drove off. We chuckled over that while packing up the gear after taping. Then, as we loaded it into our van, a Pasadena policeman pulled up and asked, “Is that camera gear in the bags?” I said, “Yes, we just finished taping a program across the street on that freeway embankment.” He told us to hang on while he parked; that he needed to ask us a few questions.

When he got out of his car, he said someone at the
WCG
had phoned in a complaint saying we had “climbed their fences and were taping on their property.” We explained that there wasn’t even a fence by where we were and showed him the location we taped from. We
filmed
their property, but we certainly weren’t
on
it. After hearing our side, the officer remarked, “Well, sometimes people twist stories when they make a complaint so that the police will respond faster.”

And sometimes they’ll even twist stories to get a favorable ruling in court.

A Chance to Eavesdrop

My father wanted to stay in the hotel room to rest that night, so Andrew, Dennis and I went out for dinner at a restaurant on Colorado Boulevard in downtown Pasadena. We left the restaurant at about 7:00 and were walking a few blocks to our van, which we parked on the street. Halfway there, while waiting for a green light at a crosswalk, we suddenly realized we were standing right next to Judge Schwarzer! There he was—the man behind the robe. He looked a lot smaller and skinnier, dressed in his casual attire. To think, when we saw him, he may have already cast his vote! We wouldn’t hear about the outcome of our case for another 10 months. But on that night, at that street corner, we were standing next to someone
who knew
.

We walked behind him for about a block, before he veered off into a restaurant with his party. We entertained the thought of getting a table close to his in order to eavesdrop. Perhaps we would hear how he came down on the case. In the end, however, clearer heads prevailed. We moved on.

In court, before distinguished-looking judges in long, black robes, one sometimes loses sight of the fact that these are mere mortals. They might be well-educated in the universities of this world. But they don’t know more than God. In the courtroom that day, it was hard for me not to worry—with Schwarzer talking about nuclear weapons and Tashima seemingly skeptical toward our position. But seeing Judge Schwarzer on the street that night comforted me. It reminded me that our fate would not be determined by distinguished looking men in black robes. It rested in the hands of the
living
God. We had relied on Him
ALONE
to this point—and we would continue to do so.

The Race Card

On September 18, 2000, the Ninth Circuit filed its opinion, voting 2-to-1 in favor of the
WCG
. Judge Letts’s ruling was reversed. The Honorable William W. Schwarzer wrote the opinion for the majority. Schwarzer noted that the
WCG
discontinued
Mystery
for a variety of reasons, including that it

conveyed outdated views that were
racist
in nature. Its Advisory Council of Elders indicated that the church stopped distributing
MOA
because of “cultural standards of social sensitivity” and to avoid racial conflict. The Council noted, “Insensitivity in this area is contrary to the doctrinal program of the
WCG
to promote racial healing and reconciliation among the races.”
²¹

That was on
page 1
. In their brief, the
WCG
had said
Mystery
had
social errors
. “For instance, increasing sensitivity to racial harmony meant that certain passages authored by Mr. Armstrong—who matured in a very different United States of the 1910s and 1920s—did not reflect
WCG
’s aspirations for the late 1980s.”
²²
That’s the way
WCG
attorneys explained it. Of course, we don’t agree with that assessment at all. But
Schwarzer
advanced the
WCG
’s critique to flat-out say
Mystery of the Ages
is racist! It’s not just outdated or insensitive—it’s
RACIST
—it causes
RACIAL CONFLICT
!
Ralph Helge
wouldn’t even take that position. Tkach Jr. would. But still, this was coming from a federal judge who was ruling on a matter regarding
copyright
law and whether or not printing an abandoned book is fair use.

At oral arguments the year before, Schwarzer clearly identified the “key issue” of the case: the application of Section 107 of the Copyright Act. Then why so much in his September 18 opinion on the inflammatory subject of race? He did address the matter of copyright law later in his ruling. But when he introduces his opinion, on page 1, with the “fact” that
Mystery of the Ages
is racist, one wonders if his personal views about the book or Mr. Armstrong skewed his judgment on a purely legal matter.