American Christian Press - Or, How To Solve a Plagiarism Problem in One Easy Step

[chockfull]

So the lawsuit with James Trimm has got me thinking along these lines. First of all, how intriguing that Frau Helga von Q-Tip spent your ABS to fly someone out to Texas to work on this copyright lawsuit along with a lawyer. And I'm sure the honorable Louis Columbo, Esq. was billing those hours. Your ABS at work! Oh, and not to mention the severe irony of TWI pursuing legal action in the copyright area.

But back to the topic at hand. There are many different documented examples of VP the MOGFODAT taking certain "liberties" with other people's materials. One source of this is a pretty well done comprehensive website by John Juedes at http://www.abouttheway.org which contains sections on this. Now perhaps some people still under the delusion that it was all some kind of divine intervention for him to "amalgamate" or "put together" teachings like they haven't been known since the first century may discount all of this, make excuses, and sluff it off as "inconsequential". And maybe others might think that it's due to not enough educational training consisting of getting a "doctorate" degree from a correspondance school located in one floor of a house in Manitou Springs, Colorado. I mean, maybe they didn't teach him how to do Bibliographies there. Right?

After all, having a framed portrait of each of these men up in the Founder's Room of the WOW Auditorium is certainly enough to recompense stealing all these people's material, right?

But no, the hoax goes even deeper. You see, in dealing with all of the traditional publishing companies it's just so much effort. They ask you all these questions. They have people review your material to ensure accuracy and relevance. And they are an impartial 3rd party company that will do really annoying things like checking your references, following up on allegations of copyright infringement, etc.!

No, that will just not do for an up-and-coming-preacher who really needs the flexibility of playing it fast and loose in the publishing arena and needs to get propaganda put out in the printed fashion to "move the Word over the World" tm.

So what's the solution? Genius. Make your own publishing company. Call it American Christian Press. After all, questioning an organization like that would be simply unpatriotic, wouldn't it? It solves all these problems. First, we can avoid all of those pesky questions. After all, many of the people we've liberally used work from are all either dead or old enough they won't take legal action. Next, we can avoid paying people and just have staff people do the work - can pay them slave wages. And finally, it really establishes your "legacy" for some other opportunist (cough, cough, Q-Tip) to come along and capitalize on the written material to build their own empire built upon the "genuine foundations", or what does she call it? "Proven ministry research"???

All in all, quite a clever play, there.

Discuss.

Edited June 5, 2010 by chockfull

[OldSkool]

Great points, Chockful! It's easy to see some of the more obscured dots when you start thinking outside the board of directors imposed box.

[OldSkool]

So what's the solution? Genius. Make your own publishing company. Call it American Christian Press. After all, questioning an organization like that would be simply unpatriotic, wouldn't it? It solves all these problems. First, we can avoid all of those pesky questions. After all, many of the people we've liberally used work from are all either dead or old enough they won't take legal action. Next, we can avoid paying people and just have staff people do the work - can pay them slave wages. And finally, it really establishes your "legacy" for some other opportunist (cough, cough, Q-Tip) to come along and capitalize on the written material to build their own empire built upon the "genuine foundations".

All in all, quite a clever play, there.

Discuss.

O.K. After working with a self published client recently who gave his publication legitimacy by hiring an attorney to incorporate his own "press," that was nothing more than an entity filed with the State I am thinking real hard about what you are saying. I had never considered American Christian Press (ACP) but remember it stamped all over TWI publications. So, does anyone have the skinny on the official reasons this was started? I mean, wtf is ACP all about? If chockfull is off base, which I doubt, then someone please come through and debunk the hypothesis.

[WordWolf]

O.K. After working with a self published client recently who gave his publication legitimacy by hiring an attorney to incorporate his own "press," that was nothing more than an entity filed with the State I am thinking real hard about what you are saying. I had never considered American Christian Press (ACP) but remember it stamped all over TWI publications. So, does anyone have the skinny on the official reasons this was started? I mean, wtf is ACP all about? If chockfull is off base, which I doubt, then someone please come through and debunk the hypothesis.

It was LAZINESS!

First, victor paul wierwille went up to Canada, took BG Leonard's class,

and came back, plagiarizing Leonard's class as "Receiving the Holy Spirit Today"

(later "Power For Abundant Living"). Then victor paul wierwille plagiarized

JE Stiles' book "Gift of the Holy Spirit" as the first edition textbook of

that same class- and named the publishing company by plagiarizing the name

of the publishing company Leonard set up- CANADIAN CHRISTIAN PRESS.

That was 1953 and 1953-1954, respectively.

He was a plagiarist, he intended to deceive the students when he

said it was his class, and when he said it was his book.

Need more?

The VERY FIRST class, he ASKED Leonard for permission to run LEONARD'S CLASS.

All people who took Leonard's class were automatically considered grads

of "vpw's" class. (A handful traveled with vpw when he sat through Leonard's

class a "second" time- he had interrupted a class in progress the first

time, and Leonard generously allowed him to take the class he interrupted

even though it wasn't his normal policy.)

When speaking to Leonard, he said he's run Leonard's class once. He took

a photo of that class, and sent it to Leonard, and that's the last he

told Leonard. Leonard, meanwhile, added the photo to his scrapbook and

believed a supposed fellow Christian wouldn't lie to him.

(One of our fellow posters later took Leonard's class, AND got to

look through his photo album AND identified the photo.)

Meanwhile, what did he tell those students? He said it was HIS class

and never mentioned Leonard to them. He kept a copy of the photo for

his own records, and after that class, he continued to run Leonard's

class with the new name and pocket the money.

vpw slowly built "his" church ministry on this. He did this while still

on the payroll of his denomination, and waited a few years before severing

ties with them. He continued to rely on "his" class and "his" ministry

(grads who stuck around), which accounted for a very small number of people

staying with him for significant periods of time, but allowed him to make

a living at it. (BTW, he regularly taught sermons, but he also kept a library

hidden that was composed of sermons and work from other Christians- and he

regularly drew from those for the sermons. He didn't write sermons from scratch-

mostly he retaught their sermons. I got that from one of the few people who got

to SEE and HANDLE those books, back when vpw still referenced them-which he

continued to do for THE REST OF HIS LIFE.)

This changed shortly after he read about the House of Acts in Haight-Ashbury.

He immediately went to San Fransicso to hijack the hippies. He convinced real

Christians among them to work with him. THEY worked for God on the East Coast

and West Coast, and membership numbers skyrocketed in the space of 2-3 years.

Once the numbers were up, then vpw kicked out the former hippies that were

responsible for all the numbers.

twi's growth was the combination of the class of Leonard's, the book of Stiles,

and the Christian ministries of men like H33fn3r and D00p.

(With some additions here and there from other authors like Bullinger and Kenyon.)

The man's entire ministry was based on plagiarizing the work of others, and hiding

the sources so he didn't go to jail.

[waysider]

Yeah, but ya gotta admit, before The Way Ministry burst on the scene, who really ever thought about re-using disposable coffee cups?

[OldSkool]

It was LAZINESS!

The man's entire ministry was based on plagiarizing the work of others, and hiding

the sources so he didn't go to jail.

Thank you very much for taking the time to post / re-post that information! I have 0 respect for VPW, the man was a fake, cook, liar, sexual predator, etc - and the way international has him on a pedestal so all can come by and worship the memory of him they have worked so carefully to concoct and preserve.

Yeah, but ya gotta admit, before The Way Ministry burst on the scene, who really ever thought about re-using disposable coffee cups?

No one else I had ever been around. Funny how stuff like that has way of leaving a REAL nasty impression. While people were doing really disgusting stuff, like reusing these cups, Vicster had millions stashed away in his coffers of the same people's money who were forced to swap spit via reused, disposable cups. Oh the irony.

[Tzaia]

The man's entire ministry was based on plagiarizing the work of others, and hiding the sources so he didn't go to jail.

Jail? - not a criminal offense. BG Leonard and others could have sued for copyright infringement, and TWI would have probably had to pay monetary damages. But no one pursued it. I don't get that. It appears that the guy was untouchable.

His plagiarism was known outside TWI. It was reported in various newspaper articles. People in TWI chose not to believe it, including me.

VPW was self-published. Nothing more than that. Many resort to self-publishing when manuscripts aren't picked up by the large® publishing houses. Makes one wonder if he even tried.

Did TWI do it's own printing and binding?

[chockfull]

Did TWI do it's own printing and binding?

No, I don't think so. I remember one big job in the bookstore being "double-checking" every copy of every book that came back from the printer. Literally one poor slave would do this full-time, going through every page of every book looking for little printing or binding errors. Because "they just don't have the same standards in the world". They usually couldn't get reimbursed for any of those as the printer would have some kind of acceptable defect level they would have to keep under. They would sell the minor defect copies at the ROA for discounts.

There is such a lack of common sense there. I mean, how many man-hours and dollars of ABS can you save by just having a RMA process like every other goods company?

The brain. You can wash it, but you can't dress it up and take it out in public.

[Tzaia]

chockfull - it's a mentality that permeates even one offshoot that I know of.