A Simple Act to Follow

It seems that Jenkins is an excellent “cold reader.” It also appears, from what little information I have been able to gather, that he uses no mnemonic system or other more technical means for his “calling out,” though he undoubtedly makes use of any information that may come his way, whether by design or by chance. Many ailing people can be diagnosed even by an amateur, by watching their gait, their complexion, or their expressions. If Jenkins were obtaining names and addresses as well, without any data-gathering, I’d have to award him my prize. But I may never have that opportunity. As of this writing, he is still trying to collect from Peter Popoff the court settlement granted him, plus another $200,000 penalty. And, says Henry Eckhart, Jenkins’s lawyer, Popoff still owes his Ohio lawyers their fees for defending him, and Danny Jenkins has left his father’s ministry. With all of his ingenuity, charisma, and showmanship, Leroy Jenkins is just another of the bombastic actors in the sad charade that passes before us. Lots of faith—from the victims—but no evidence whatsoever that he produces any healing.

8

W. V. Grant and the Eagle’s Nest

Joseph Barnhart, professor of philosophy at North Texas State University, was one of those who gave me valuable assistance in my investigation of faith-healer W. V. Grant. As a result of his observations of this ministry and Grant’s techniques, Barnhart suggested a scenario that I have come to accept—though with some difficulty—because it satisfies all the evidence and it has been confirmed by my subsequent investigations. He contends that the faith-healing service functions as a significant drama for those who attend. This explains their willingness to believe what others see as obvious delusions. He says that we cannot divide the participants into “audience” and “performers.” The entire auditorium becomes a huge stage, with both the preachers and the believers taking part in the drama. A careful observer notices that almost everything in the drama leads up to the climax, the long-anticipated healing scene. It is a ritual of major magical importance to the participants. Barnhart points out that the afflicted person wants to get close to this magic. By pretending—earnestly—and by refusing to entertain any doubt, on his or her part or on behalf of another, the subject maintains and reinforces the myth that all of the actors have agreed to believe in, for their own reasons. The faith-healing service is a sort of mutually accepted morality play that is participated in without doubt or hesitation, for fear of breaking the spell.

The Big Operator from Big d

Walter Vinson Grant is a tubby, 40-year-old faith-healer now based in Dallas, Texas, at a quite modest (500-seat) “cathedral” he calls the Eagle’s Nest. He inherited his anointment from his father, a butcher turned tent-show preacher who was said to be very much against faith-healing. Grant Sr. wrote booklets full of trashy, juvenile, bigoted pseudo-religious pap that his son is still selling as if they were his own creations. The books rave about UFOs. demon possession, and psychic powers, predicting that men will never land on the moon because Lucifer and his devils live there. Winning titles among the 60 available (at 50 cents each) are The Great Dictator—The Man Whose Number Is 666, I Was a Cannibal, Men in the Flying Saucers Identified, Faith for Finance, and Freedom from Evil Spirits. Grant dresses in expensive and well-tailored business suits set off by monogrammed shirts and elegant jewelry. As he performs on stage, equipped with a stammer that he seems unable to cure (though he claimed to have “healed” it 20 years ago), he looks like prosperity personified. He must have a highly elastic wardrobe, as his girth oscillates grandly between visits to a North Carolina fat farm and a spa near San Diego. It was at this spa that Grant says he was approached by—of all things—a young deer that uttered words of prophecy to him, sort of a Delphic Bambi. Grant wanted to announce this on his TV show, but director Rod Sherrill says he talked him out of it. Grant runs his mail-order business from a post office box, selling a book titled God’s Answers for You (“made to sell for $30” but available for $15, “gold gilted [sic] edges” and all), tape cassettes of sermons, Bibles (“half-price this month”), record albums, and eight-tracks. Also available is a Bible course ($64), which offers the subscriber a purple and gold diploma as a real “Reverend” with an “honorary Doctor’s Degree” and a “license to preach” after certain “true-and-false [sic]” questions have been answered. Grant offers to take $2.00 off the price for anyone who gives him the “name of someone who wants this course.” Until recently, a popular item in his catalog was the “Jesus 8 Personalized Health Club Kit,” said to be a mixture of herbs, vitamins, and “7 Magic Minerals of Youth.” The accompanying literature promised to cure AIDS, among other problems. Grant Jr.’s history is uncertain at best. Consider what Grant Sr. wrote about his son’s early history and what the son recalls of his own youth. The father claimed that during one football game, Grant “was knocked unconscious that night. He played for half the game while he was unconscious, scoring three touchdowns.” Well, I hardly think that myth needs to be debunked. We are accustomed to impossible claims from the Grants. Suffice it to say that the school young Grant attended was W. B. Adamson High School in Dallas, and those three touchdowns don’t show up in the record books there. Grant Jr. tells reporters that he “led the state of Texas in scoring as a halfback ... and I had 77 full NCAA football scholarship offers.” He says that he scored an average of 22 points a game while at Adamson. These stories are firmly denied by the recollections of Adamson’s former coach, James Batchelor, who now works with the Dallas Cowboys football team. He recalls Grant well. “He was not the kind that would get 77 scholarships,” Batchelor says. The fact is that W. V. Grant did not receive offers from even one school, let alone 77. And no football player in the history of that school has had the record Grant invented for himself. Batchelor says Grant’s claims are “just not true,” and he regrets having to blow the whistle on him. Even Grant’s college degree is phony. He claims that he obtained it from “Midstates Bible College” in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1972. He displays the diploma on his office wall. But Midstates wasn’t then and isn’t now registered with the Iowa Department of Public Instruction, as all parochial and public schools are required to be. It wasn’t recorded with the secretary of state’s office in Iowa as a corporation; nor was it listed in the county recorder’s office. It didn’t even show up in the telephone directory!