A Friendly Letter, The Blog.

A good friend of mine from college days is a member of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian church in Knoxville that was shot up on Sunday, July 27. She was there with her husband, but thankfully was not hit.

(Thankfully. I feel a twinge of survivor’s guilt writing that; but there it is.)

The reports Monday about the rantings of the shooter, wanting to kill all liberals and gays, and the targeting of this particular church, well-known for its welcoming stance and other progressive views, brings a lot of things home to me.

(more…)

The short essay below is by a Friend who has spent much time in Africa, working with the Africa Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) project.

I believe Dave makes some cogent points. In particular, I agree that “engaging” Friends United Meeting (FUM) over the issues of homophobia, and the other matters listed in my post below, “Wrestling With a Roomful of Elephants,” is the best course.

I also think such “engagement” can be done in a variety of ways. The path that makes the most sense to me is the one currently followed by my own YM, Baltimore, which has stayed a member of FUM, but has declined to send financial support while its homophobic policies remain in place. (I’m not sure what Dave Zarembka, who is also a member of Baltimore YM, thinks of this stance, and don’t wish to imply that he shares it.)

For those not associated with FUM, but who want to follow Dave’s advice, let me suggest they consider support of the Africa Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI, a project of Friends Peace Teams. Friends Peace Teams is a group based in St. Louis, which is supported by 17 US Yearly Meetings. Among these are three pastoral-FUM groups, but none of the Evangelical YMs.

AGLI has organized many workshops and trainings regarding violence reduction and healing in the aftermath of violence. [One very interesting account of an American unprogrammed Quaker’s volunteer stint with AGLI is online here .] AGLI works with FUM-sponsored groups in Kenya, but is not itself under FUM’s umbrella.

Thanks to Dave for a useful and thought-provoking contribution to this conversation. (more…)

Below is the complete text of two epistles issued by East Africa Yearly Meeting — North.

I note that the 2007 Epistle comments on the statements at the FUM General Board session in Kenya, as well as responding to some reaction to them from a Yearly Meeting in North America.

From this 2007 Epistle, it appears to me that it would be a mistake to consider this matter in any way “resolved.”

Update: Note the reply from an FUM staffer included after the Epistles.

Readers may also want to look over the earlier post, “Wrestling With a Roomful of Elephants,” and the response to it from Patrick Nugent.

(more…)

FUM After Kenya (First posted on June 1, 2007)

[See the response linked below from Patrick Nugent, former head of the Friends Bible College, Kenya.]

Current Quote: “While somewhat less colonial, the [Friends United Meeting] work in East Africa is still structured around economic disparities that promote patterns of dependency. FUM has made a lot of progress in this area, but old patterns die very hard. Impoverished Kenyans and Ugandans expect all help to come from outside, in the form of U.S. dollars.

There is very little sense of empowerment or recognition of the need or ability to build upon the assets already existing in East Africa. Patterns of dependency are still deeply intertwined in the good intentions of North Americans, who instinctively use money to fix desperate needs, and in the desires of Africans to have outsiders provide the solutions.

These patterns of dependency are compounded by endemic corruption, with Kenya deemed the second most corrupt country in Africa, and Uganda only somewhat better, which makes getting intended resources to desired recipients very difficult. Every single effort of North Americans who are attempting to do useful work in East Africa has to take this systemic corruption into account, or risk being very wasteful of resources.“

– From the Report by the New York Yearly Meeting Representatives to the FUM Board Sessions in Kenya, second Month, 2007

When FUM comes up for discussion, in almost any context, I have found that the old saw about the “elephant in the room” is very apt. Except not in the singular. Over time, I have felt such rooms crowded with not one elephant, but several — by my latest count, at least five.The recent turbulent FUM Board sessions in Kenya, and the reports and related documents I have read about them this spring, mention most of these creatures, while being largely fixated on only one. So I think it might be useful to specify my list, as the basis for my own stance on the recent events, and suggestions for future steps.Let me add here that my sense of this herd of pachyderms was only marginally brought into view by the Kenya events. Rather, it grows out of more than twenty years exposure to FUM, including several years of close involvement with its issues and internal structures, and is rather confirmed by this latest episode.

Here is my list:

Elephant #1. Homophobia. This is the most salient among my liberal Quaker brethren, and does not need much exposition here. Advocates of the FUM status quo profess great weariness that some among the liberal YM reps keep “harping” on this issue, when, they say, there are so many more pressing matters to consider, including people starving.

That’s as may be. For my part, I share the strong feelings of revulsion voiced by some others, and must decline to be silent about it. Yet I have a regret about the heavy liberal emphasis on this issue, namely that it diverts the from the second elephant, which in my view is of more institutional significance, namely:

Elephant #2. Rampant Corruption. I am grateful to the New York YM representatives, whose report on the Kenya sessions was the only one I have seen which names this scourge and speaks of it plainly. The situation is fairly straightforward: Kenyan public culture is deeply, deeply corrupt. The highly respected anti-corruption monitoring group Transparency International lists Kenya as among the most corrupt societies in the world.

The impact of this cultural reality on FUM dealings with Kenyan Friends has been pervasive and dreadful, both there and among FUM groups in the USA. The Southeastern YM report noted in horror how almost all the Quaker facilities their rep was taken to had been stripped bare by theft and looting. But she does not know the half of it. Nor is this larceny new; in my time on the FUM missions board, twenty years ago, the hushed up reports of wholesale thievery and embezzlement were legion.

The exception to this pattern, Friends Theological College, proves the rule: its Director, Patrick Nugent, an expatriate American, stated frankly in his most recent letter to US supporters that one of the principal duties of the expatriate director of this institution is to “safeguard its assets.” This is a delicate phrase for protecting them from being looted. It appears he has done a good job of this; but can that continue? More on this presently.

It’s hard to overstate how shocked I was when I began to plumb the depth of this corruption, and how deeply the FUM corporate culture was complicit in and codependent with it.

Here it is worth repeating a key sentence from the New York YM Reps’ report: Every single effort of North Americans who are attempting to do useful work in East Africa has to take this systemic corruption into account, or risk being very wasteful of resources.”

My reaction to this sad reality soon crystallized into a conviction that is still unshaken: US Friends should not send another penny to corrupt operations. To do so is neither “christian” nor prudent, or even generous. It is a failure at the most basic level: sending American money to Third World crooks does not keep the poor in those nations from starving.

More on this as well in a few moments. Thence to the third elephant:

Elephant #3. The Richmond Declaration of Faith. There are several aspects of this document to mention: its checkered and unhappy history; the misrepresentations about it which are so often repeated; and above all for me, the theology it articulates.

Its history is one of being repeatedly used as a creedal club; the misrepresentations focus on disingenuous assertions that this record is not what it so plainly is; and its theology was controversial, and rejected by many utterly Orthodox Friends and YMs from the day it was presented. Moreover, these early rejections were due as much to the fact that many Orthodox Quakers simply did not believe much of it, as they were to the quite justified fears of its use as a creedal weapon.

An essay I published in 1987 detailing the case against the Richmond Declaration (with a link to the Declaration’s text) is online here. I stand by its main points today.

But these doctrinal issues are not limited to the YMs which are now described as “reunited”; indeed, they have raged within many of the “undivided” FUM YMs as well. Which bumps us right up against the tusks of the next elephant:

Elephant #4. Chronic divisions within heartland FUM yearly meetings. When I was working as a Quaker journalist, it took only a modest amount of digging to uncover the fact that, behind the screen of efforts to purge us “liberals,” several of these groups were beset by chronic internal factional strife.

Among the contested items were such matters as THEIR dual affiliations with evangelical associations, efforts to adopt outward sacraments (in clear defiance of the Richmond Declaration and their own histories); outbreaks of glossolalia; and not least, widespread and vocal abandonment of anything resembling Quaker pacifism. (It is ironic indeed that several of the most hotly contested matters would violate the plain letter of the Richmond Declaration as much as any liberal YM ever did.) Off the record, YM superintendents ruefully admitted having to fend off repeated attempts to split their bodies from one of these directions or another.

Against this turbulent background, jabs at the “liberal” YMs in the body were a convenient foil and distraction. But in truth, we had very little to do with all those troubles, and our disappearance would not cure them. The results of these and related trends add up to what, seen from the more orthodox end of FUM, may well be the largest of this unhappy herd of quadrupeds, namely:

Elephant #5. The drastic decline of the main FUM bodies. Here in North Carolina, as an example, the FUM YM, the largest in the US, has lost thirty per cent of its membership in the past two decades, and the attrition continues. To the west, Indiana and Western YMs, once quite large themselves, have each shrunk as dramatically. They are now reported to be looking at consolidating, in hopes there might be enough membership between them to support a single YM superstructure.

Among the effects of this galloping deflation are an increase in internal tension, which manifests, among other ways, in a search for scapegoats (e.g., the gays, “universalists,” and “liberals”); increasingly frantic and futile efforts to find a magic evangelistic bullet to reverse the trend; and a steady decline in the caliber of their community leadership, because the body can’t afford quality help.

(Here I return, for evidence, to the situation of Patrick Nugent, Director of the Friends Theological College, the best and least corrupt of FUM’s African ventures: his most recent letter, dated 22 April 2007, announced his abrupt resignation, cutting short what he had hoped would be a career-long assignment there, because FUM could not afford to support his family. This is a very revealing indicator: supporting one family was too much for FUM’s sinking resources. I rest my case.)

I have no remedy to offer for this decline in the FUM heartland YMs, only a stubborn, even truculent observation, reinforced by much study and observation: despite the jibes and jabs aimed in our direction at the Kenya sessions and earlier confrontations, this collapse is NOT THE FAULT of the liberal FUM bodies, and forcing them (us) out would not mend it.

So. In the face of this herd of elephants crowding the room at any FUM-related session, what course can be suggested for other concerned Friends, particularly among its “liberal” YMs?

First, of course, I affirm that each body will find its own way. Being more “liberal” than some other FUM groups does not make them/us all alike, candidates for some one-size fits all response. Already, it appears that Southeastern YM has taken steps likely to end in its departure from FUM; so that could be one pole of response.

On the other end, the New York YM representatives’ report urges the opposite course, one of “staying at the table,” based on their perception of a high degree of underlying commonality between them and other FUM groups.

My own reaction is more assertive, but comes down to what, for a Baltimore YM Friend, is something of a status quo stance, at least for us. Baltimore YM since 2004 has made clear that it will not leave FUM, but at the same time it will not support programs including homophobia. As a result it has continued to appoint representatives, but has declined to send FUM a financial contribution; one compromise offer to send funds designated for use outside its homophobic policy was rebuffed.

In short, Baltimore is “in struggle” with FUM — not simply grinning and bearing it, but not storming out in a huff either. From my perspective, this is the best available response. That’s because I believe it expresses the truth of BYM’s relation to FUM, and gives it concrete form. It continues conversations and maintains opportunities for constructive service. It also keeps the institutional form of our relationship (money) in line with our convictions. And I hope it stays that way until some of these key issues are satisfactorily resolved.

For BYM this stance was sparked mainly in reaction to Elephant #1, FUM’s homophobic culture and policy, which was on flagrant and repulsive display in Kenya, and which has impacted BYM in particular before. Yet it also serves very well for dealing with the second, which in my view is just as bad: it means we are not helping keep afloat the culture of corruption that is so ingrained in FUM’s relations with its international missions.

For me this is absolutely the proper stance; no funds should go to any such projects without ironclad guarantees that they will be honestly and properly used. Not a dime. I would welcome the addition of an anti-corruption concern to BYM’s brief in support of its stance.

In this connection, I have heard references to a legacy of colonialism and racism in the relationships between American Friends and Kenyans. No doubt that history is there; and the present reality of vast differences in wealth persists. Nevertheless, I am unmoved by any replaying of such rhetorical cards to argue for our continuing to support theft, embezzlement or diversion. Tolerating corruption does not promote justice, equality, development, or for that matter, the gospel. “Thou Shalt Not Steal” is as orthodox as anyone could ask.

But perhaps liberal Friends could be helpful to FUM in this area. Because we are mostly not invested in the corrupt aspects of this system, if we send them representatives who are knowledgeable, sophisticated and vocally intolerant of such malfeasance, they could be a valuable resource if and when the corporate culture becomes truly ready for positive change.

The BYM stance could likewise serve as a useful starting point for tackling Elephant #3, the Richmond Declaration. Informed challenges to the outdated and divisive notions which produced it are entirely in order, and in fact have been raised repeatedly since its drafting in 1887. Informed theological debate would be an asset to FUM, no matter how annoying some might find it.

However, in this regard, liberal Friends as a group are hobbled by their gross ignorance of theology generally, never mind the specific theology underlying that document, and the very dubious interpretation of the Bible the Declaration purports to uphold. If the liberal YMs were to insist that their representatives to FUM were knowledgeable in these areas, and ready to advocate for them, the level of discourse could be much elevated, though differences would not be banished. I am not overly hopeful about much progress there, in the short run at least. But the hope remains, as does the need.

As for Elephants #4 and #5, the internal divisions and membership collapse decimating so many of the “orthodox” FUM bodies, I don’t think the liberal YMs really have much to offer, except perhaps an example of a Quaker way that is proving to be much more viable. Not that I expect many of the “orthodox” bodies to follow this other path — although here and there, I hear of local Friends churches moving in that direction, and they could bear encouragement and fellowship.

Indeed, overall the plight of FUM appears to be growing increasingly grave. The sudden resignation of Patrick Nugent, as devoted and able a servant as the body has had in recent decades, is for me a telling and somber indicator. Less dramatic reports of downsizings and cutbacks in its operations have become a regular occurrence.

NO Bailouts: As these comments suggest, my perception is that these misfortunes are largely self-inflicted. In this case, it would be a big mistake, I believe, for liberal Friends to heed any call to rescue FUM from the consequences of these internal weaknesses, financial, theological, or otherwise, until at least elephants One, Two and Three have been dealt with.

Similarly, I am unable to go along with pleas to keep quiet about these things in the interest of some notion of civility or fear of giving offense. Sermons describing LGBT persons as worthy of death need to be vigorously repudiated, whenever they appear. Ignoring corruption only feeds the cancer. And challenging the flawed theology of the Richmond Declaration is a mandate.

At the same time, liberal FUM Friends can be ready to help pick up the pieces. And by continuing to stand up for their core values, they can bear a useful, if not always comfortable, witness, and build community with those who are prepared to do so.

As far as it can be glimpsed from here, the future for FUM looks clouded and troubled indeed. The role of the liberal YMs within it is likely to continue to be beset by controversy and occasional acrimony. Such it seems is our fate. Will liberal Friends in FUM be up to this call?

Send comments to: chuckfager(at)aol(dot)com

A response from Patrick Nugent, former head of Friends Bible College, Kenya

- - - - - - - - - -

Reports On The Kenya FUM Sessions Available on the Web

(If I have missed links, please let me know.)

SEYM Rep’s report (Lisa Stewart): http://www.seym.org/FUMltrs.pdf/FUM%20GEN%20BOARD%20IN%20AFRICA%5B1%5D.pdf

New York YM Reps’ report on Kenya FUM Session:

http://www.nyym.org/pubs/FUMRepsReport0704.pdf

Will Taber of New England YM’s blog report on his trip to Kenya — with numerous comments: http://gtitl.blogspot.com/2007/02/back-from-africa-with-broken-heart.html

Will Taber’s comments on “the discussion so far”: http://gtitl.blogspot.com/2007/03/reflections-on-conversation-thus-far.html

Transparency International International Corruption report:

http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2006

By Chuck Fager

Dear Friends,

One of the finest, most eloquent ministers of this generation of liberal Quakers has left us. William J. “Bill” Kreidler, of Beacon Hill Meeting in Boston, died on June 10, 2000. This is a time to mourn, and also a time to remember, and to pay tribute, which is what I want to do here

Of Bill’s biography, I know only a few scattered facts: He was from a farm community in western New York, and grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church. He began college in Buffalo and finished in Boston, where he became a public school teacher. He was gay. He wrote books about conflict resolution in schools, and did consulting with school systems on violence prevention. Where and how he came to Friends I don’t know; but he was a founding member of Beacon Hill Meeting.

My first memory of Bill is from St. Lawrence University, at the FGC Gathering of 1984. I was leading a workshop, my first for FGC, on the Basics of Bible Study, and he was in it.

Well, partway in it anyhow. As I recall, he spent most of those weekday mornings perched on the sill of an open window, there on the second or third floor of our old classroom building. I didn’t think he was going to jump out; it was brutally hot, the building was not air-conditioned, and he was trying to breathe.

But at the same time, he did seem to be keeping a safe distance, a space between him and the dangerous book I was waving around, and maybe the bearded breeder who was waving it as well.

During the workshop we spent a lot of time reading aloud the story of David, Jonathan, Saul, and Jonathan’s crippled son, Mephibosheth, as I had culled it from the First and Second books of Samuel. This is a gripping, mournful story, which I called “The Bible as Soap Opera,” and perhaps it went on too long, especially given the weather.

But all through it, there is a clear image of Bill, still on the windowsill, head cocked to one side, paying close attention as we plowed through this saga of love, betrayal, death, and loyalty beyond death. Glancing over at Bill from time to time, I wondered if something about it was sinking in. I now think that it was.

Three years later, Bill and I met again at FGC, this time in Oberlin, Ohio. The weather was better that week, and we sat down on a green lawn and asked each other how we were doing. My story was pretty routine, but Bill had a saga of his own. He was, he said candidly, coming out of a bad relationship and a long cocaine addiction. He had found the support and love there, especially among the gay Friends, to make a turn toward the twelve steps. Things were looking up.

There was much more to this remarkable story, but I didn’t hear it until a few years later, when someone gave me a tape of Bill’s keynote talk at the 1989 Midwinter Gathering of Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns. On the tape I heard a polished storyteller, but one who was using his talents and gifts for something far beyond a mere performance.

“I’m 36 years old,” he began, “and I’ve finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up.

“I want to be an old Quaker lady.”

Over the laughter, he continued:

“I don’t say this lightly; I have thought long and hard about growing up to be Gene Kelly. I never learned to tap dance, though — at least not yet.”

As the chuckles died down, he explained that “old Quaker ladies” weren’t necessarily either old, Quaker, or even ladies; this image was a metaphor for a kind of spiritual centeredness that he had lost, and was now slowly, painfully working to regain. “This is a really pitiful story,” he remarked about halfway through. “I tell it well, but it’s a really pitiful story.”

The twelve step pilgrimage he recounted was familiar in outline; it retold, as most of them do, the story of “Amazing Grace,” lived out: he once was lost, in a maze of drugs, alcohol, and abuse; but now he was being found. Some of his specifics were new, though, especially when he got to the part about a spiritual awakening. In his report of it there was, as I expected, some mention of familiar Quaker names, Fox and Woolman; but more important, it turned out that Bill had discovered, or been discovered by, some of the key women saints in the western mystical tradition, especially Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila.

“Terry and Julie,” he called them, making us laugh, but not making a joke of it. They too, had remarkable stories, which meant a reat deal to him. He had been taken on what became a long-term version of what Douglas Steere calls “the journey in,” by way of prayer and related spiritual disciplines. He wasn’t sure where it was leading him. He wasn’t sure how it all fit together. But it did. And he was willing to let us in on it.

Even on my tinny old tape player, the eloquence and depth of Bill’s presentation–his witness, really– still comes through clearly, more than a decade later. It was a sermon, but like few I had ever heard: equal parts polished standup comedy, wrenching personal confession, and straight-out preaching, it was at once ego-tripping and deeply humble, and entirely compelling.

Further, while many of the religious themes of Bill’s talk were traditional, their context was not: for him, the saving community had been, not a conventional church or even a meeting, but rather the group, Friends for Lesbian and Gay Concerns (FLGC).

While by 1989 FLGC was essentially an accepted presence at the annual FGC Gatherings, this acceptance was still relatively new, and not uncontroversial. Furthermore, FLGC, like all other such groups, was feeling the impact of the AIDS epidemic, and the ramifications of this crisis were still sinking in.

One of these ramifications was the targeting of gay and lesbian groups as a locus of personal and social evil by powerful and very vocal forces in society at large. To have a member of such a group describe it so convincingly as a vehicle of personal salvation was very much at variance from this reverberating chorus, and Bill’s audience was very moved by his affirmation of it.

Not that there was any politics in his talk. Rather, one of the points he most wanted to make was that, “As lesbians and gays, I think that joy is one of the things that we have to offer. And I don’t just mean that we have better taste and more fun. Although of course, we do.”

When he closed with by evoking an image of FLGC at its best as, “a room full of old Quaker ladies, and they all were tap-dancing,” it’s a safe bet there was hardly a dry eye in the meetinghouse.

Whether Bill knew it then or not, talks like this soon launched him on what Friends call a public ministry. He was already well-known in educational circles as a consultant to schools on conflict resolution and violence prevention. This was a job he had essentially created for himself, growing out of his work as a schoolteacher in tough Boston public schools. Soon he was combining this work with his ministry among and to Friends.

Update by Chuck Fager

Wichita, KS — On this Friday the 13th, U.S. Judge Monti Belot accepted Priscilla Deters’ plan for remaining free on bail until her sentencing, but imposed tough restrictions on the now convicted felon, and spoke darkly of her likely jail sentence. Belot also predicted that there might be additional prosecutions in the multimillion dollar church fraud case.

Belot set bond for Deters at $200,000, and gave her until today to post it. Rather than come up with that amount herself, Deters made arrangements with a bonding company, to which she was obliged to pay a reported twelve percent of the total, $24,000, as a fee which will not be returned. The source of the $24,000 was not made public.

This bail fee could be thought of as a kind of rent; it buys Deters about nine weeks of freedom. Belot set the sentencing date for May 22, and reiterated his intention to send Deters to jail at that time, not waiting for any appeal.

In addition to the steep bail amount, Belot set tough restrictions on Deters for this period: He ordered her not to have any contact with her victims or investors, and to cease any efforts to raise funds. He also ordered that Deter’s identical twin sister, Phyllis Beaver, be required to surrender her passport.

This was due to the sisters’ close physical resemblance, which the judge regarded as increasing the potential risk of flight. When Deters’ attorney, Steve Gradert, said Deters had told him her sister did not have a passport, the judge retorted that he did not believe anything Deters said, and insisted that government passport records be examined.

Deters was also directed not to leave her home area–except, the judge added, to answer any additional indictments. Deters defrauded churches and persons in 21 states. There are reports that Kansas federal prosecutors have been contacted by prosecutors in other states, regarding use of the extensive body of evidence they obtained and introduced at the trial.

Future prosecutions might not be limited to Priscilla Deters alone. Judge Belot noted that Deters had been aided by several other persons in her fraud scheme, and he said these other persons, included both family members and Quaker pastor Randy Littlefield, a defense witness whom Belot scorned as “despicable.” All, he declared, were “candidates for indictment.”

Deters’ future, according to the judge, is bleak. Under federal law, she could receive as much as four years for each of the twelve counts on which she was convicted. Belot said that in passing sentence, he would take into account the number of her victims, the amounts involved, her extensive efforts to obstruct investigations into her activities, and her lack of any signs of remorse. He stated that Deters, who is 63, would likely spend the rest of her life in prison.

Update by Chuck Fager

Wichita, Kansas — Throughout the eight days of testimony in the Priscilla Deters-Productions Plus trial, U.S. District Judge Monti Belot was a model of judicial impartiality.

He reminded the jury that the defendant was presumed innocent, that she did not have to prove anything, and that they were not to draw negative inferences from her decision not to testify. Before they left to deliberate, he instructed jurors that her good faith and character alone would be sufficient reasons to find her not guilty.

Deters was originally charged with fourteen counts of wire and mail fraud, in connection with a church fundraising scheme that cost its victims almost $6.5 million, including over $400,000 from Cherokee area residents. Two of the counts were later dismissed by the prosecution.

Early Friday afternoon, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of guilty on all twelve remaining counts, after deliberating about three hours.

Once the verdict was rendered, Belot held a hearing on whether to allow Deters to remain free on bail until she is sentenced. At the hearing, Belot shed his air of impartiality, and became a tower of seething judicial wrath.

When defense counsel Steve Gradert began to explain that Deters had some supporters who were willing to co-sign a surety bond for her, Belot interrupted to reject this gesture as “a worthless promise. After the testimony I’ve heard,” he continued, “their signatures don’t mean anything to me.”

One of the proffered co-signers was George Brown, a retired clergyman and educator who had been in Wichita with Deters throughout the trial. Brown was on the board of a trust Deters set up in the early 1990s, which supposedly oversaw her program of “matching gifts” to church groups.

But under withering cross-examination by government attorneys, Brown admitted that he had loaned Deters over $200,000, much of which has not been repaid, that he knew virtually nothing of the actual operations of Productions Plus beyond what she told him, and that many of her activities disclosed by government evidence would have been clearly improper.

Gradert attempted to reassure the judge, insisting that Deters was unlikely to pose any physical danger to others, and was unlikely to flee.

Again Belot angrily brushed aside his efforts. “I can tell you right now,” he said, “there will be no conditions of release that will not include a substantial professional surety,” or bail.

Deters was indicted in December of 1996. After her arraignment on the charges, bail was set at $25,000, and she was released on her own recognizance, which means she did not have to put up any funds or property to guarantee the bail. Judge Belot made clear today that this situation would not continue.

“This woman is a risk to any honest person,” Belot thundered, “and that makes her a risk to the community.”

He declared that he would set bail at not less than $250,000, “and probably higher than that.” “This woman stole millions of dollars,” Belot continued, “and some of that has not been accounted for. I’ll make sure that not a penny of any bail that is posted is made up of any of the money that she stole.”

Presumably this would mean Deters could not offer her house in Walnut, California as surety, because government evidence indicated she had made many mortgage payments on it with funds from her “investors.” It might also prevent her family members from assisting her, inasmuch as trial evidence likewise showed she had spent at least $800,000 on her sons and other family expenses.

In addition, all of Deters assets are in the custody of a receiver appointed by a California state court to distribute them among her victims, which include churches and individuals in twenty-one states. However, the receiver, attorney Richard Clements of Signal Hill, has told this reporter that after two and a half years in that position, he has yet to recover any assets.

Belot continued the bond hearing until Monday, to give Deters and her attorneys time to develop a plan by which she might be able to remain free until the sentencing. Defense counsel indicated that sentencing usually takes place not less than seventy days after a trial, during which time a sentencing investigation is conducted and a report prepared.

Whether or not Deters can figure out a way to persuade Belot to leave her at liberty until then, the judge left her in no doubt as to his intentions.

“I’ll guarantee you, Mrs. Deters,” he said to her, “you better bring your toothbrush when you come for sentencing, because I’m going to send you to jail.”

To Gradert he added, “She doesn’t have a prayer on appeal. She had a fair trial, and there’s not a single issue of any substance for an appeal. She’s been found guilty, and is guilty. So she may as well start serving her sentence right now. I have heard nothing during this trial to convince me that she is anything but a crook, of the first water.”

According to the federal statutes involved, Deters could receive up to four years in prison for each guilty count, and a fine of up to $250,000.

Gradert explained in an interview that actual sentencing decisions are governed by an elaborate set of federal sentencing guidelines. Such factors as the amount of money involved, the number of victims, the intricacy of the conspiracy, and so forth are calculated and a score developed.

The higher the score, the longer the likely range of sentence. Judges exercise their discretion within the range set by the calculations under the guidelines.

During the trial, Steve Gradert tried repeatedly to suggest that Deters was being “framed” by other witnesses in the trial, to cover up their own thefts and fraud. He targeted especially Maurice Roberts, former Superintendent of Mid-America Yearly Meeting.

While waiting for the bail hearing to begin, I asked Gradert about this: Why the frequent insinuations, but not any actual evidence?

He grinned ruefully and shook his head. “Hey,” he said, “if I’d had any evidence, don’t you think I would have introduced it?”

Update by Chuck Fager

Wichita, Kansas — Nine women and three men are now to decide Priscilla Deters’ fate.

Was her Productions Plus business, as prosecutor Annette Gurney charged in her closing remarks Thursday, “just a scam”?

Or was it, as defense counsel Steve Gradert put it, the sincere but failed effort of “an honest, hardworking Christian woman”?

Judge Monti Belot’s instructions made clear that the issue of purpose is the heart of the case. Whether Deters had an “intent to defraud” the church groups and members who poured $6.5 million into her business accounts, is now up to the jury to determine.

Lead prosecutor Annette Gurney spoke to jurors across a large table piled high with documents–checks, bank statements, trust forms, letters, memos and faxes, stretching back to 1990. These were the government’s exhibits, reams of evidence which Gurney claimed proves that “Priscilla Deters lied,” repeatedly and criminally to her clients, in “a scheme and artifice to defraud.”

She lied, Gurney contended, when she told them she had millions of dollars in a trust fund to distribute. She lied when she told them their investments would be kept safe in CDs. She lied about having profitable businesses to finance her matching gift program. And she lied, Gurney repeated, when she told them she would double their investments in a year, without risk.

Deters also failed to tell her clients many things, Gurney continued. She didn’t tell her clients that she was spending their money on her personal expenses, or her children, or care for her aged mother.

“Hindsight is always 20-20,” Gurney said, “and you may ask yourselves, how could anyone fall for a scam like this?”

The evidence showed Deters used referrals, Gurney said, recommendations from prominent figures in church circles, some of whom served on “a bogus board of trustees.” The prosecutor charged that Deters misled many groups by sending them altered copies of CDs, on which their names had been typed. Deters also sent them regular “beneficiary reports,” showing large amounts of “matching funds” in nonexistent accounts.

In light of this, Gurney said, “it’s not so astonishing that the church groups fell for her scam.” Then she took aim at a key defense witness.

“What’s astonishing,” Gurney insisted, “is that Randy Littlefield could take this [witness] stand, after he signed up so many people in Cherokee for the program, after he signed up his church in League City, Texas, after he signed up his own mother–that he could take this stand and can tell you how honest she is.

“Now that’s astonishing,” Gurney said. “All Deters was, was a shrewd, calculating thief.”

When Gurney finished, defense counsel Steve Gradert rose to insist that the evidence showed nothing of the sort. Quoting a character in the Paul Newman movie “Cool Hand Luke,” he said that, “‘what we have here is a failure to communicate.’”

Gradert reminded the jury that he had asked almost every witness on both sides of the case whether Deters was a difficult person to understand when she talked, and invariably they said she was. Misunderstanding was compounded, he continued, by “a lot of people in this case who were greedy, who let their greed overcome their understanding of what was being said.”

These greedy misunderstandings were spread widely, Gradert said, by persons who may have been pursuing their own private interests and profit.

Gradert identified three such possible culprits: Maurice Roberts, former Superintendent of the Mid-America Yearly Meeting of Friends Church, Charles Crosby, Deters’ onetime sales representative, and R.J. Wegner, the Nazarene Church Superintendent for North and South Dakota. Roberts was forced to resign by Kansas Quakers in 1994 when the program collapsed and the yearly meeting faced losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Deters fired Crosby for what she said were his misrepresentations of her program. And Wegner’s Dakota Nazarenes lost over $500,000 on Productions Plus.

All three testified last week as witnesses for the prosecution.

“Randy Littlefield may have sold his mother on this program,” Gradert argued, “but he had faith in the program as a covenant. He has more credibility in this case than Maurice Roberts or R. J. Wegner. They didn’t understand the program, or they took advantage of it,” said, adding that, “we don’t know whether they personally got money out of the program.”

Gradert recounted how Wegner urged his pastors to borrow money from their own members to get in on Deters’ program. “And when the state issued a cease and desist order, Wegner started funneling the money to his pastor friend in California. He says it was Deters’ idea, but he did it.”

Gradert then took particular aim at Roberts. “Nobody ever checked Maurice Roberts’ bank accounts,” he said. “How much credibility can he have?”

He noted that Roberts’ latest employer, Philip Harmon, pled guilty last year to fraud charges in an insurance and investment scam that cost victims almost $40 million dollars. “Is it a coincidence that Maurice Roberts is around all this fraud?” Gradert asked. “I submit he’s lying to you when he says the Priscilla Deters misled him about her program.”

“In a case like this,” Gradert concluded, “which turns on intention, I submit that you have to look at character.”

He then reminded them that several of Deters’ friends and supporters had testified to her honesty. “She still owes many of them money, and yet they continue to believe in her. The government will tell you that they’re scared they won’t let their money back. But I submit it is because they know her and know her character. I submit this makes for a reasonable doubt, which should lead you to a not guilty verdict.”

Prosecutor Allen Metzger had the last word. “Good character can be a defense in a fraud case,” he acknowledged. “But here, the defendant’s character doesn’t stand alone. It stands in the piercing light of the evidence, documentary evidence. And what representations did the defendant make regarding the assets in her trust account? Five million dollars at one time, fifteen million another time.

“But what do the facts show? She opened one of her trust accounts with exactly one penny. And she opened the other with $150.”

“The question of greed has been raised by the defense,” he said. “I’m glad it has been raised.” He repeated the prosecution’s figures which showed Deters spending almost three million dollars on personal, family and business expenses, insisting, “She did not tell one person that that’s where she was spending that money.”

“She sent investors beneficiary reports which identified their money as being ‘non-expendable,’ but she spent it. And if so, good faith is not a defense.”

The jury was sent out to begin its preliminary work at 4:35 PM, and is expected to deliberate in earnest beginning Friday morning.

Update by Chuck Fager

Wichita, Kansas — Amid legal wrangling over an investigator’s report and a son’s testimony on behalf of his mother, the defense in the Priscilla Deters-Productions Plus case rested its case on Wednesday.

Deters is charged with 13 federal counts of wire and mail fraud, in connection with a church fundraising plan that authorities call a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Her attorneys have labored to portray her as an honest Christian businesswoman whose companies ran into legal and funding obstacles.

Kansas state investigator Gary Fulton, who presented much of the evidence in the prosecution’s case last week, was put back on the stand Wednesday morning, as defense attorneys called into question his report of where Deters spent more than $6,400,000 of investors’ money between 1990 and 1995.

Fulton conducted a search of Deters’ home in December, 1994. The search yielded six boxes of documents, including checks and bank records. Based on these records, Fulton prepared a chart for the jury which showed that only a little over $2,000,000 was returned to investors, while $3,000,000 was spent on Deters’ family and other business expenses.

Defense counsel Steve Gradert pointed to $986,000 of receipts classified as “unknown” by Fulton, and asked if these could not in fact have been profits from her business.

“If there were business profits,” Fulton answered, “I couldn’t find them. These could be personal loans; a lot of people loaned her money. But if your question is, could I positively say there were no revenues? I don’t know.”

In rebuttal, Prosecutor Allen Metzger reviewed Fulton’s work establishing that funds from later investors were used to pay “matching gifts” to earlier investors, which constitutes a Ponzi scheme. “Based on these records,” Metzger asked, “did you form an opinion as to whether this was a Ponzi scheme?”

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“She was running a Ponzi scheme,” Fulton insisted. “That’s all it was.”

The final defense witness was Deters’ son Loren. Loren Deters, 28, told the court he often heard his mother talking about the nature of her businesses while he was growing up in their house in Walnut, California, until he went college in Berkeley in August of 1991. But when defense counsel Steve Gradert asked him to describe how the business worked, prosecutors objected strenuously and repeatedly that his report would be irrelevant hearsay.

U.S. District Judge Monti Belot was also uneasy. He sent the jury out, then conducted an extended conference with the attorneys over whether federal rules of evidence permitted the son to be thus questioned repeatedly about what his mother said.

“If all we’re going to hear is what the defendant told him about this and that,” Belot declared, “I have real problems with that.”

Gradert argued that because the younger Deters had lived in a house with is mother over an extended period, and had worked in the business while a student, his knowledge was more firsthand than typical hearsay.

Belot ultimately ruled that some of these statements would be allowed, but cautioned that, “I won’t allow the defendant to put in her exculpatory testimony through this witness.”

Loren Deters then stated that his mother’s business was built on joint fundraising ventures with nonprofit groups. The group put up some money to help finance a particular fundraising event or program; Mrs. Deters then organized and conducted the program, in cooperation with the sponsoring group; and then she and the group split the proceeds, if any.

Gradert asked if Priscilla Deters had described the goal of this program.

“Yes, was the reply. “It was to help nonprofit groups.”

Gradert’s next question was, “Loren, do you love your mother?” “Yes,” he replied. “With all my heart.”

“Would you come in here and lie for her?”

“No,” Loren answered. “I have a pregnant wife back home, and I wouldn’t do anything to mess that up.”

Asked if he had an opinion about his mother’s character, he said she was, “Incredibly kind-hearted, incredibly honest, and a lot of people misunderstand her.”

Cross-examination was brief and pointed. After establishing the Loren Deters knew little about the difference after leaving for college in 1991, Prosecutor Allen Metzger bored in on the difference between what he had heard and what his mother had written to her client groups.

“You knew the business from firsthand experience prior to August, 1991,” Metzger said. “Even then, your mother didn’t show you the written documents she was sending to the nonprofit groups, did she?

“No.”

“You didn’t go with her on trips when she talked with these groups?”

“No.”

After her son’s testimony, the defense was faced with a crucial decision: whether or not Priscilla Deters herself would testify. Under federal rules, she could not be forced to take the stand. But without her direct testimony, the defense could not be sure it had gotten her version of her career to the jury.

After a long recess in which she and her attorneys huddled in a conference room, the session resumed to hear Gradert announce, “The defense rests.”

Belot later told the jury to expect closing arguments and instructions Thursday afternoon.

Update by Chuck FagerWichita, Kansas — Randy Littlefield remains a true believer in Priscilla Deters’ honesty and charcter. He is also convinced that she has been persecuted by the authorities who now have her on trial.

With that background, his testimony in her trial could have been expected to be cntentious, especially on cross-examination.

It was. The former pastor of theCherokee Friends Church in Cherokee, Oklahoma, Littlefield sparred with prosecutors over almost every point of his statements regarding the fate of $475,000 sent to Deters’ company from Cherokee.

Littlefield was pastor of the Cherokee Friends Church in 1992 and 1993, when funds were collected for Deters’ company, Productions Plus. He took the stand as a key part of the defense effort. The case is expected to turn on whether Deters intended to defraud her clients of their money; if she can persuade the jury that she was simply an honest businesswoman frustrated and persecuted into failure, she can expect an acquittal.

Littlefield said he first contacted Deters in 1992, in an effort to help raise funds for a new church building and community center. At his invitation, Deters came to Cherokee and described her program to the church congregation and other interested persons. By making “deposits” with Deters, he explained, “we had an opportunity to receive gifts as Mrs. Deters’ businesses prospered.”

Littlefield described the agreement between Deters, Friends church members and local citizens as a “covenant,” and insisted it was established and conducted strictly “on a spiritual basis.” He said Deters told the church of biblical examples of God making covenants with Israel as the model for the relationship.

Asked by defense counsel Steve Gradert if the relationship offered any guarantees of returns, Littlefield answered, “Absolutely not.” He was similarly emphatic in denying that Deters had offered “matching gifts” for depositors’ money.

After leaving Cherokee, Littlefield said, he was pastor of League City Friends Church near Houston, Texas. When he left there, he went to California and worked for Deters as an “independent consultant,” attempting to sell her books and advertising signs. He stated that he only actually worked for her for about two months, and his paychecks of $600-$700 per month were infrequent. When Gradert inquired as to why, he said he figured it was because the company was strapped for cash. By that time, investigations of Deters in Kansas and Calfironia were proceeding apace.

Nevertheless, asked his overall opinion of Deters, Littlefield assured Gradert and the jury that he considered her “very honest and has a lot of integrity.”

Prosecutor Allen Metzger clashed with Littlefield from his first question on cross-examination. He asked if it was true that Littlefield had invested $10,000 with Deters and had persuaded his mother, Earlene Littlefield, to invest $100,000, both with no return.

Littlefield affirmed the amounts, but insisted that these funds were placed not with Deters but with the Houston Graduate School of Theology, which was attempting to raise money to build a new campus. “They decided what to do with the money,” he insisted.

But Metzger was ready with a letter Littlefield had written to Deters in 1994 about these funds, indicating plans for them, and won a grudging admission that this indicated he did know the funds were going to Productions Plus.

Littlefield also bridled when Metzger asked whether Cherokee Friends had “invested $475,000 with Deters’ companies.”

“No,” he countered, “it was not an ‘investment.’ It was never called an ‘investment.’”"But the money was supposed to be kept safe?”

“That’s correct.”

“Wasn’t it supposed to be put into a certificate of deposit?”

“No,” Littlefield said, “just that it would be in an FDIC insured account.”

“Did you tell the defendant that she could spend that money on her children and her personal expenses?” Metzger pressed. “Did you know she had given her son money to buy a $775,000 house?”

“My question,” Littlefield retorted, “is, has that been proven?”

At this, Judge Monti Belot, who is known as a stern courtroom disciplinarian, angrily rebuked the witness. “Mr. Littlefield, you do not ask questions,” the judge said. “You are here to answer questions.”

Metzger relentlessly reeled off what is now a familiar list of challenges:

“Would it be important to know if Mrs. Deters was going to spend this money on payments to her children, her aged mother, and other personal expenses?”

In each case Littlefield acknowledged that it would be important to know.

“If she didn’t tell you she was spending this money in these ways,” Metzger summed up, “would that cause you to question her honesty?”

After a long pause, Littlefield murmured, “Yes.”

Nor was Metzger ready to give up on “matching gifts” and CDs. Showing Littlefield a prospectus for the program distributed by the Cherokee Friends Church, he had the witness read to the jury a statement that “Productions Plus made a FAITH COVENANT AGREEMENT TO MATCH EACH DOLLAR that’s deposited….”

Metzger then had Littlefield read another statement, that the funds would be “placed in TIME SAVINGS CERTIFICATES…” (Note: capitals in the quotes were in the document.)

“So your committee thought CDs were going to be bought?” Metzger asked.”I guess so,” Littlefield conceded, adding, that “this was an evolving understanding.” ”

But this document reflects the community belief, after Mrs. Deters’ presentation, that their money was going to be in CDs, doesn’t it?”

Again, Littlefield paused, and then said quietly, “It does.”

Metzger then turned to Littlefield’s work at the Friends Church in League City, Texas, where he went from Cherokee.

“League City sent $139,000 to Productions Plus, is that right?”I don’t know the exact amount,” Littlefield replied.

“If the defendant’s bank deposits shows that amount from them, would that be correct?”

“It would.”

“In fact,” Metzger said, “that’s why you had to leave League City, isn’t it? Because they lost that money?”

“I can’t say that,” Littlefield protested.

“But you left League City without a job, correct?”

“That’s the way it is in the Friends Church,” Littlefield said.

“But League City lost its $139,000, didn’t it?”

“No,” Littlefield demurrred, “it has not.”

“Did it get the money back?” Metzger asked. “Did the defendant give you any evidence that the $139,000 was in a CD anywhere?”

“No.”

In addition to Littlefield, the defense brought in an artist, Jackson Bailey, whose major work is the world’s largest painting of the life of Christ. Deters tried for several years to obtain the paintings and display them as a fundraising effort, without success.

The court also heard from Duane Hansen, the Presiding Clerk of Mid-America Yearly Meeting of Friends Church, the association to which the Cherokee Friends Church belongs. Hansen told about his discovery that the yearly meeting’s former superintendent, Maurice Roberts, had misled him and other yearly meeting officials about certain agreements he made to local churches.

Roberts had privately pledged that the yearly meeting would guarantee the return of these churches’ investments with Productions Plus, but told Hansen no such agreements existed. After the truth was disclosed, in August, 1994, Roberts was forced to resign.

The trial continues Wednesday, and Judge Belot told the jury he expects it to conclude by Friday.