by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The leftist writer Louis Adamic, later to be nationally recognized for his articles and books, was beginning to achieve some local renown by the time his “The Truth About Los Angeles” was issued in 1927 as the 647th entry in the “Little Blue Book” series by Haldeman-Julius Publications of Girard, Kansas. His pungent prose, peppered with snappy turns of phrase and no small amount of irony and sarcasm, is certainly interesting, if not overheated and broad in its idiosyncratic interpretations of the Angel City and its environs.
An unnumbered section, titled “Los Angeles—A Christian City” continues his skeptical analysis of the region’s religious aspects and he began by informing his readers that a perusal of the Los Angeles Times led him to, “eager for entertainment,” note that an unnamed pastor was to spent a month of Sundays asking what would Jesus do (WWJD was not just a 1990s phenomenon, it was so in the first years of the 20th century) is he was on the city council, was the county district attorney, ran a newspaper or operated the streetcar system?
Adamic took these queries as a suggestion that “all’s not well in the City of the Angels” and that “the most Christian city in Christendom is still deficient in certain of its departments.” The writer took the opportunity to suggest other possible roles for Christ, including as head of the local Prohibition office, manager of a boxing venue, filling the role of film censor Will Hays, the second coming of director Cecil B. de Mille or even “a Kleagle of the Klu [sic] Klux Klan?”
The author suggested that some of the above were “not yet thoroughly saturated with the spirit of the lowly Nazarene” and that “a little constructive Criticism” would be such as to make them “see their errors and straight[a]way hit the trail that leads to Christian virtue and salvation.” As to the Angel City being a Christian one, Adamic observed that recent years included the introduction of “not alone many new and superior brands of Christianity but Efficiency, Pep and Snap.” He also suggested,
In money invested, annual turnover, the number of people interested, and in prosperity, present and prospective, Christianity now holds third place among the industries of Los Angeles, the two leading ones being real estate and the movies. But in due time, Christianity shall surpass these, too; perhaps it shall absorb them, making them part of itself. At any rate, that is what a study of its current position and tendencies indicate. There are a few people who proclaim that the Church is becoming, or already is, a branch of the real estate business, but these are infidels, atheists, anarchists, bolsheviks [Communists], muck-rakers, and other such insects.
Adamic also insisted that “Mother [Mary Baker] Eddy’s Christian Science is Los Angeles’ favorite religion,” based on the fact that there were 17 “more or less magnificent houses of devotion,” as well as many reading rooms and offices in downtown, though how many adherents there were was not stated. In addition to the more mainstream denominations, “there is the huge Angelus Temple” covering a city block and including a radio station” under the guiding hand of “a female evangelist [who] saves souls en masse, heals broken bodies and gathers in vast sums of shekels, which she, a prudent, patriotic Angeleno invests in choice real estate.” This was Aimee Semple McPherson, whose career was certainly remarkable in many aspects.
The author listed a litany of religious organizations including “churches of Divine Power, of Divine Fire . . . of the New Jerusalem, of all Nations, of the Messiah . . . of the Blue Flame, of God’s Truth, of the New Social Order, of Christian Unity, of New Thought, of Advanced Thought . . . a People’s Industrial church of God, a Chapel of Bible Numerology . . . Truth Studios, Truth Centres, Unity Centers, Rescue Missions, Gospel Halls and Bible Lecture Halls.”
Highlighted was the downtown Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now BIOLA in the suburb of La Mirada), whose leading founder, oil magnate Lyman Stewart of Union Oil Company, was not mentioned, but which was described as “a veritable stronghold of Divine Truth, vast and invincible, its soldiers, make and female, ever on guard, ever eager to face the Devil and his forces and give them battle.” Adamic then told of a train trip in which he witnessed a female member of the Institute earnestly ask a passenger next to her if he’d been saved, leading to the rejoinder that “he had no idea he had ever been lost and . . . it wasn’t anybody business whether he was saved or not.”
Rising to a lather, the young woman quoted from the Good Book and “the Institute’s infallible interpretations,” leading two others on the car to exclaim “Praise the Lord!” and “Amen!” The subject of her inquiry “persisted in his indifference, if not hostility, to her salvation scheme, and was getting more uncomfortable every moment,” while two men nearby “snickered and leered as if they were inspired by the Devil.” The target of the proselytizing left his seat, but the streetcar missionary persisted, saying, apparently, “can’t you see the Blood of the Lamb on my hands.” The conductor was duly summoned, and “a tinge of sarcasm in his voice,” ordered the zealous women to sit down and not bother others, “which she did, and then settled down to a good long cry.”
Of these “workers in the vineyard,” there were legions, Adamic added, some acting on their own, fanning out throughout the county, including “to the beaches whither flappers and flopdoodlers, young and old . . . expose parts of their anatomy to each other’s gaze, and the matchless Southern California sun rays, to dance to the mad rhythms of jazz orchestras, to listen to the pagan sounds of the ocean waves, and to bathe in the shimmering dimness of the midnight moon.”
These missionaries also took steamers to Santa Catalina Island, as well as distributing their literature in dance halls, public bathrooms, post-office lobbies, on park benches and in parked cars, and they comprised all kinds of workers, while hailing from such Midwestern states as Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, “thousands of them, aflame with the faith, answering the call.” As to those who were to “give the lowdown on Salvation, Sun, Darwinism, Heaven and Hell,” Adamic detailed that,
The great man may be a former pimp and heavyweight champion of the world, a reformed dope fiend, an ex-gambler, and ex-train bandit, or some other such “mighty hunter before the Lord.” One may get an invitation to go and hear the “Beautiful Flapper Evangelist” . . . or an exponent of the “Miracle of Grace” who was “Forty-five years a drunkard, gambler, outcast, and criminal. Five times around the world as a hobo . . .”
Occasionally, there would arrive in the Angel City “a great evangelist who draws tremendous crowds . . and sells bales of pamphlet and books” and whose devotees fervently believed that “when the millenium comes the big things shall happen . . . right in Los Angeles, where ground is already broken and foundation are laid for the new capital of Kingdom Come.” Even an auto repair shop was not a place “where one can sin in absolute peace and safety” as Adamic and the proprietor of the “‘Xclnt Auto Fixeteria” were accosted by a women “aflame with the zeal of the one true faith.”
Purportedly, when she exclaimed that there were millions alive who would never die, presumably because they were saved, the hardened shop owner rejoined, “sometimes I’m inclined to think that millions now living are already dead.” He kept working on the writer’s car, while the zealot expounded for 20 minutes on the truths she held to be self-evident. Adamic took a swipe at the Los Angeles Examiner of media titan William Randolph Hearst, suggesting “one cannot even enjoy the murder and scandal stories unmixed with the Christian spirit of Los Angeles,” because the publisher ran a daily two-column “Power of Prayer,” which averred that “every unhappy condition, moral, physical and financial, can be healed through prayer.” Therefore, it was noted, “prayer is thus placed upon an efficiency basis; results guaranteed, inevitable. And the circulation of the Examiner increases.”
This analysis, Adamic observed, “imparts a gray, sickly complexion to the city” but he then remarked that “Los Angeles is America . . . [and] is the most representative of it . . . [as] racially fatigued, decadent” so that “you need not spend months traveling from state to state; take a through train to Los Angeles and spend there a week with a competent guide.” The metropolis “is the youngest of our great cities” and peopled largely from those from the Midwest and East and who migrated “to escape the roil, drudgery and drabness of their farms and shops; to free themselves of their narrow spheres; and, most important of all, to spare their children from their own fate.” This attitude, though, was subconscious, as well as conscious.
These new arrivals, the author commented, spent time on landing to take bus tours and gawk at the manses of millionaires and movie stars, visiting the studios, dining in cafeterias, “in brief, realizing the dream of his life—ease, comfort, rest.” Soon, however, these novelties would wear away and, cause “his mind and habits are set,” the settler finds that “he is in a strange world,” but the common ground of religion intercedes, even if that means joining Sister Aimee’s Church of the Foursquare Gospel and becoming one of her traveling missionaries. As for George L. Thorpe, said to be a leading Fundamentalist, he was quoted as claiming a half-million adherents, most in or near the Angel City and registered voters and whom were prepared to vote on whether evolution should be taught in public schools (the Scopes Monkey Trial recently was conducted about this issue) and that “Los Angeles will decide!”
Given that the next ten pages of “The Truth About Los Angeles” is dedicated to a detailed discussion about Elsie Lincoln Benedict, the “archpriestess of inspirational bunk,” we’ll cut this part short and return with part four, so be sure to check back with us for that.
I often imagine what Louis Adamic would say if he were here in Los Angeles today – seeing how dirty and disorderly the streets have become, and how taxpayers’ money has been squandered on public projects, such as the billion-dollar traffic construction link to LAX.
I am even more intrigued by what Adamic might say if he traveled from Los Angeles throughout California today, witnessing how our housing policies have been crafted and managed; not to mention the hundreds of billions wasted on high-speed rail. In that case, even eloquent as Adamic was, he might be left at a loss for words.