Religion: Immaculate Conception

Nucleus of the theology of Harlem’s Rev. Major J. (“Father”) Divine is the idea that God is in everyone. Last week this idea became an issue in Los Angeles’ Federal Court where portly John Wuest

Hunt, 33, “John the Revelator” to his fellow Divine cultists, was on trial charged with violating the Mann Act with a Denver 17-year-old named Delight Jewett (TIME, April 12). Defendant Hunt, eloquently seconded by his Negro Attorney Hugh MacBeth, explained that his “relations” with Delight Jewett were religious in nature. He wanted a “Virgin Mary” to produce a “New Redeemer.” Could Judge Leon Yankwich understand that?

Judge Yankwich, after hearing pretty Delight Jewett describe her experiences with Defendant Hunt in Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Palm Springs and Albuquerque, could not. Miss Jewett testified: “Mr. Hunt told me I was to be the mother of the new redeemer of the world. It was to be an immaculate conception.” Judge Yankwich: “Who was to be the Holy Ghost?” Witness Jewett: “Mr. Hunt didn’t say.”* After several days of such maundering testimony, with Attorney MacBeth subpoenaing but not delivering Aimee Semple McPherson as an “expert”‘ witness, Defendant Hunt was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.

Announcing that he would appeal John Hunt revealed that he had spent a night in jail trying to convert his cellmate Robert S. James, a barber awaiting execution for drowning his wife after trying to murder her with a rattlesnake. Prisoner Hunt found Prisoner James “receptive.”

*The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception concerns the conception of the Virgin Mary free from original sin, was confused by witness and Judge Yankwich with the unrelated Article of Faith concerning the Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ.