Religion: Mighty I AM

Stubbornness, disputatiousness, independence or emotional confusion have endowed the U. S. with more religious and quasi-religious creeds and cults than any other civilization the world has known.

The nation’s capacity for them is as boundless as its hope and gullibility. A case in point, ”The Mighty I AM Presence,” has lately been flourishing in California, hothouse of cockeyed sectarianism.

Last week, after a highly successful fortnight of meetings in San Francisco, its exponents arrived in Kansas City, whence they planned to proceed to Cleveland and Washington.

The Mighty I AM Presence is probably the only U. S. faith whose custodians travel in a cream-colored limousine with a concert harp hitched on the rear. Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Ballard and Son Donald—as their printed literature invariably refers to them—claim to be the “Accredited Messengers” of a group of spirits whom they call the “Ascended Masters.” These include Christ and Moses, but their most articulate spokesman is one “Saint Germain.” St. Germain, says Mr. Ballard, appeared to him on Mt. Shasta eight years ago, gave him a drink of “creamy liquid” of which “the electrical vivifying effect on my mind made me gasp with surprise.”

Since then St. Germain has revealed to Messenger Ballard—a grey-haired onetime mining engineer, today as well-fed as most cultists—a substantial body of thought which adepts of the Mighty I AM Presence may study, in books costing from $1 to $2.75 per copy. The Accredited Messengers claim 400,000 followers.

Like many other psychological religionists, devotees of the Mighty I AM Presence believe in self-improvement. Like Mormons, they abstain from alcohol, narcotics, tobacco. They also abjure onions and garlic, feeling that their odors are repugnant to the Ascended Masters to whom they pray. Furthermore, they do not keep pets in their houses. People who follow these precepts and live an “I AM Presence-like life” are called “Hundred Percenters.” Meeting in I AM reading rooms and auditoriums—of which there are five in California, two in Florida, others in Seattle, Chicago, Philadelphia—these Hundred Percenters pray together, believe their group prayers are more powerful than single ones.

Mr. & Mrs. Ballard and Son Donald sell their followers pins, I AM rings ($12), phonograph records of the discourses of the Accredited Messengers (also harp solos by Mrs. Ballard), and pictures in all sizes of St. Germain, of Jesus Christ.

Pictures of the Mighty I AM Presence, showing two figures, the upper one of which emits rays of light, loom large in the cult’s meditative meetings. Such pictures, garishly colored, may cost the faithful as much as $15. Originally Mr. & Mrs.

Ballard and Son Donald declined to accept money from people who attended. After they hit their stride holding I AM meetings, however, the meetings have burgeoned with ushers in white, microphones, colored charts and pictures to illustrate the theology of the I AM Presence. Mr. Ballard dresses nattily, Mrs. Ballard, a handsome blonde, wears jewels and evening dress. They now hand out envelopes labeled I AM, Love Gift, and explain that they no longer deny to their followers the right to make contributions.