Raising the Ruins (33 page)

On October 10, 2000, we submitted a petition to all 27 judges at the Ninth Circuit for a rehearing
en banc.
³⁸
But The Ninth Circuit rejected our petition on November 9. On the surface, it appeared the odds were stacked heavily against us—especially since the chance of ever being heard at the Supreme Court is 1.6 percent. (Of the 5,000 or so requests for appeal every year at the Supreme Court, only about 80 of them are accepted.) But we were excited by the prospect of just submitting our case before the highest court in the land.
What an honor,
we thought.

Beyond that, there was the counterclaim. As much as the
WCG
would have liked it to piggyback on top of the
Mystery
ruling, it was an altogether separate case. And the longer litigation wore on, the easier it would be for us to expose the annotation lie by pressing them on the “plans” for the project.

We also saw a brightly-lit silver lining in the damages trial, because it would be tried before a jury. All along, my father felt that if we could tell our story
before a jury,
and
expose
the
WCG
for what it deceitfully did to Mr. Armstrong’s legacy, we would gain a distinct advantage. It’s one thing for a high-ranking
WCG
official to distort the truth and change his story in a deposition that most people never see. But to be exposed as a liar before a 12-person jury and a packed courtroom is much different. And rest assured, even if only a damages trial, we were determined that those men would be brought before the jury to answer for what they had done.

And besides what might happen in court, who knew what might happen outside of court. As my father told
PCG
members, something “dramatic” was going to happen in this case. “This news could be the greatest blessing this church has ever had,” he said. “A miraculous decision from God can change this little work as a winning decision … never would have.” Hearkening back to the 1970s, when the state of California seized control of the
WCG
’s assets and falsely accused Mr. Armstrong of all kinds of outrageous activity, my father said, “I’ve always thought that what happened when the state of California attacked the church under Mr. Armstrong, that that was the church’s finest hour. … It unified God’s people as nothing ever did.”
³⁹

“It’s not over yet,” my father insisted. “We’re going to win this thing in the end.
We absolutely know that.”
⁴⁰

“… Worldwide claims it is entitled to all the tithes and other contributions given to the splinter group’s church by people inspired by copies of the book that the group printed.”

— Wall Street Journal

February 21, 2001

The day after the Ninth Circuit filed its opinion, we stopped distribution of
Mystery of the Ages
and the other five works of Mr. Armstrong we had printed. My father then spent a few days weighing our legal options and beseeching God. On September 28, as we had grown accustomed to during the lawsuit, he came out of seclusion prepared for an offensive strike. He reminded Dennis Leap and me about what we had seen. God
inspired
Judge Letts to grasp the central points of our case, my father said. God
inspired
Mark Helm’s oral argument at the Ninth Circuit. God inspired Judge Brunetti’s dissenting opinion at the Ninth. “Remember
what we have seen
in this case and be encouraged by it,” he said. He reminded us that Mr. Armstrong spent practically his entire life operating on the edge of disaster. “Everything,” he said, “hinges upon
faith.”

With that in mind, he decided to resume distribution of Mr. Armstrong’s works until issuance of the official court order to cease and desist (the appellate court’s ruling did not serve as such an order). He was well aware that the
WCG
would probably point to this action as “proof” of our “willful intent” to break the law. But since the order requiring us to stop had not yet been issued, my father felt like it would be a lack of faith not to disseminate God’s truth. Of course, once the injunction was filed, we fully intended to comply with the order at once. But until then, it was a race against the clock to see how much literature we could distribute before we were ordered to lock it up.

Our November 2000
Trumpet
splashed this headline across the cover: “A Modern Day Book Ban.” Inside the issue, we talked about
our
Christian duty and why we risked quite a lot in order to make
Mystery
available. We wrote,

The Worldwide Church of God has no interest in ever printing
Mystery of the Ages
in any form. Even if they did attempt such a project, perhaps just to spite us, it would be the most scathing condemnation of Herbert W. Armstrong and his teachings that you have ever read—much the same as
Transformed by Truth
.

That is why we feel it is our
duty
to make this book available to the general public—and at no charge.
¹

In the January 2001 issue, we ran a two-page spread advertising the 1980 version of
The United States and Britain in Prophecy
. We urged readers, “[I]f you don’t have a copy of the larger version, please write for your copy
while you can.”
²
We knew the injunction would be filed any day, so we were trying to unload as many books as possible. That advertisement brought in more than 3,000 requests for the book.

The following month, we did the same thing for
The Missing Dimension in Sex
,
admonishing readers, “It could be your last chance to ever get this book!”
³
Unfortunately, that issue landed in mailboxes too late. On the evening of January 29, 2001, the court-ordered injunction was finally filed. Technically, it barred dissemination of
Mystery of the Ages
only. But we chose to cease distribution of all Mr. Armstrong’s works.

Thus, we were not able to satisfy thousands of requests for
The Missing Dimension in Sex
. So we directed all those who asked for the book to instead contact the
WCG
. We even gave them the
WCG
’s address and phone number. Since the
WCG
now had big plans for Mr. Armstrong’s literature, we urged people to call the
WCG
to check on the progress of their plans for distributing Mr. Armstrong’s works.

The Wall Street Journal

To this point in the case, we had to purchase ad space to tell our story to a mass audience. So when
Wall Street Journal
reporter Jess Bravin contacted us in November of 2000, we were
ecstatic
. Widely read across business, financial and legal districts worldwide, the
Journal’
s circulation was about 2 million. A full-page ad in a publication of its stature runs at about $175,000. So we knew that if we could get a fair story out of the deal, it could be hugely beneficial to our cause—
and free
.

Bravin was drawn to our case because of its uniqueness. “It was absolutely fascinating,” he said, “two churches suing each other over inspired writings.”
⁴
As to the legal questions in the case, he was fascinated by the “unusual collision between copyright laws, freedom of speech and freedom of religion”—all of which, he said, are protected by the Constitution.
⁵

Our lawyers supplied him with the relevant legal briefs and opinions and we gave him a pile of Mr. Armstrong’s literature as well as
Transformed by Truth.
After that, we didn’t hear back from him for several weeks. For a while, he got sidetracked with the hotly contested U.S. presidential election of 2000. We were, nevertheless, anxious to hear back from him—and hopeful that his editors wouldn’t nix the story.

Soon after the election crisis ended, he contacted Dennis to say he was moving forward on our story. He arranged to meet with us at our headquarters facility in Oklahoma. Arriving in Edmond on Friday, January 26, 2001, we guided him on a tour through our offices and facilities. That afternoon, he sat down to interview my father for more than two hours. During the interview, my father explained how he came into the Worldwide Church of God as a young man. He recounted the events surrounding his firing in 1989. In discussing the emergence of the Philadelphia Church of God after the split, he told Jess, “All we’ve ever wanted to do is continue with what Mr. Armstrong did.” My father admitted that we are not what you would call a mainstream denomination. But like Mr. Armstrong, we do profess to be followers of Jesus Christ’s message as revealed in the Bible, he said.

The next day, we invited him to attend our church services, where I happened to be giving the sermon. Having visited a
WCG
service the previous week, Mr. Bravin noted afterward how different the two services were. The
WCG
service had more singing and testimonials, whereas ours was more informative. I told him that the format for our service is exactly the way it used to be in the
WCG
.

That evening, we took him out for dinner and then invited him to a concert sponsored by our Philadelphia Foundation. Of course, we had no idea how we would be portrayed in his piece, but it was still exciting just to have him in town—and knowing that the court case brought it all about.

Front Page!

Jess called Mr. Leap late Tuesday evening, February 20, to tell us the story would appear the following day. I left for work at 5:30 the next morning and hurriedly stopped at a convenience store to get the paper. The clerk must have thought I was a bit odd, watching me rush into the store, grab a
Wall Street Journal,
and proclaim, “I can’t believe it!” There, on the far-left column of the front page,
above the fold,
was a drawing of Herbert W. Armstrong prominently displayed at the beginning of the article. For me, even without reading the article,
that was enough
to make my heart race with excitement! I bought three copies and headed off to work, where I finally sat down to read the piece.

Bravin told the story of a church that disavowed the tenets of its founder after his death, even to the point of destroying his written works and preventing all others from printing them. “Through it all,” he wrote, “a splinter group in Oklahoma continued to take Mr. Armstrong at his word. Wanting to provide new converts with all of Mr. Armstrong’s insights, the group began to print
Mystery of the Ages
and give it away.”

What resulted, he explained, was “an unusual legal challenge.” He continued,

Worldwide Church hasn’t lost sales of its founder’s book because it never charged for it while publishing it, and certainly has no wish to sell it now; nor has its adversary ever sold the book. But
Worldwide claims it is entitled to all the tithes and other contributions given to the splinter group’s church by people inspired by copies of the book that the group printed.
⁶

Just six paragraphs into the piece, he told readers about the
WCG
’s determination to take tithes and offerings away from the
PCG
, which was exactly right. We didn’t charge for the book, so what money was there to go after for “damages,” besides the tithes and offerings of our membership?

From that point, he delved into a brief history of Mr. Armstrong’s ministry, Tkachism, and the
PCG
’s emergence onto the scene. Not all of this history was expressed very favorably toward Mr. Armstrong, but it clearly brought out the fact that we were following in Mr. Armstrong’s steps. And he also made note of Tkach’s “Christian duty” statement—something we never tire of seeing in print.

While some of the history could have been portrayed better, my father felt like we came out on top with respect to the legal coverage. Along those lines, my father noted, “I don’t believe it could have been better balanced.”

Our lawyers were elated by the article.

Mr. Tkach Jr. wasn’t quite as happy with Bravin’s work. According to Tkach, Bravin interviewed him and Greg Albrecht for “nine hours” and yet only quoted him twice. “Only one of the quotes was actually correct,” he said in an interview.
⁷
Tkach also felt like Bravin’s statement about the
WCG
going after our tithes and offerings was
misleading
. “The truth of the matter,” Tkach said, “is that the Ninth Circuit Appellate Court ruled in our favor, and eventually
Gerald Flurry
’s group will have to pay what is known as damages for the wrong they committed.” He continued,

Normally, we might be entitled to the profits from the sale of the book. But since the book was given away and not often sold (except for a brief time in book stores) the court may accept as the measure of those damages the amount of money Flurry received that is traceable to the book, in other words, donations from people who got the book and sent in money. Obviously, this becomes a calculation of a dollar amount, not the actual checks of the donors somehow signed over to us.
⁸

Regarding Bravin’s comments about the
WCG
taking our tithes and offerings, psychologist Tkach said Bravin was speaking metaphorically, not literally. He later suggested that we sell off some of our property to pay off the damages.
⁹
Of course, there’s little difference between proceeds from a property sale and tithes and offerings direct from members, because we would have never acquired the property in the first place without membership donations.

Harvard Law Review

If the
Wall Street Journal
helped us get some good publicity on the outside, the
Harvard Law Review
gave us additional hope that things might turn around in court. The April 2001 issue of the well-known law journal criticized the Ninth Circuit for applying the copyright law
narrowly
. “By giving insufficient weight to the religious nature of the text,” the article stated, “the court interpreted fair use in a manner that contravenes the goals of a doctrine designed to encourage, not hinder, the free expression of ideas.”
¹⁰
Of course, this is what our lawyers had been arguing all along. Technically, yes,
WCG
held the copyright to
Mystery of the Ages
. But they were using it unlawfully—to suppress the free expression of Mr. Armstrong’s ideas. “The most serious error in the court’s analysis,” the
Review
continued,

was its failure to credit sufficiently
MOA
’s centrality to
PCG
, which led it to misapply the first fair use factor. M
OA
is required reading for those who seek baptism in the church, and church policy mandates reading the book before [attending] services because it “provides the key to understanding the Bible.” The dissent recognized this centrality. The majority, however, treated
PCG
’s copying and distribution of
MOA
as a straightforward infringement case. It failed to recognize that to prohibit
PCG
’s use of the book would be to suppress both the unique expression of the ideas in the book and the ability of
PCG
’s members to live according to their religious faith.

If the majority erred in not recognizing this centrality, it made matters worse by giving credibility to
WCG
’s plans for producing an annotated version of
Mystery
.

The court’s assumption that
WCG
was not seeking to keep
MOA
from the public (or from
PCG
) rested on a tenuous belief in the sincerity of
WCG
’s annotation plans; it then privileged those speculative plans over
PCG
’s immediate, religious need for the book.

Like Brunetti, the
Review
noted that the
WCG
had no plans whatsoever to reproduce
Mystery of the Ages
—certainly not in the form Mr. Armstrong printed it.

W
CG
withdrew
MOA
from circulation because its leaders believed they had a ‘Christian duty’ to avoid propagating the book’s doctrinal errors; the church’s reasons for not wanting
PCG
to copy
MOA
were clearly not limited to market concerns.
¹¹