abwe want to thank you for being here and also thank you for being a sponsor without individual donations and the support from our community and around the nation southern festival of books would not be t possible it would not be able to continue to be free for you so we want to urge you to visit the website and give as you can and thank you for being here. You are really in for a treat this afternoon. The book that we have here and will be talking to the author david katie who am getting ready to introduce religion of fear the true story of the church of the god of the Union Assembly. What a story it links into tennessee in 19 other congregations across the nation. Cady ably juxtaposes the bizarre tale of the church of god of the Union Assembly with contemporaneous history illustrating how this power mad yet charismatic leader came to rise without anyone noticing anything out of the ordinary. In a part of the world where pentecostal churches are common. The kind of sum it up, heres a quote by shakespeare though all things foul would wear the brows of grace yet grace must still look so. We are going to hear from david cady about how he does that. Let me tell you a little bit about david. He was born and raised in northwest georgia and graduated from right here middle Tennessee State university. We are glad to know that. He received his masters degree in science from the university of georgia abim so sorry about the loss yesterday david. Sorry i had to throw that in. David taught science for 32 years before he retired at Dalton High School in georgia and that of course retired in 2000. He began writing at the age of 50. His First Published book was the handler which is about snake handling near chattanooga. For the handler david was nominated for the georgia author of the year in 2007. He is also the author of fatal option the sequel to the handler and severed. David started his research for religion of fear in 2011. It was published just this june by the university of Tennessee Press in knoxville and since publication has been one of the highest selling books out there we cant wait to hear more about it. David lives with his wife cindy and rocky face georgia. David, please tell us what led you to write this book . And grew up in the headquarters of a Church Called the church of god Union Assembly. I didnt know a whole lot about it even hethough the church was across the street from where i lived. I didnt even know there were 54 other churches. I thought there was just that one church and it happened to be the headquarters. A guy by the name of zach norwood would come in after id written the other books and said by the way thats debbie norvells father and he said ive got a book free to write i thought it was to be about the culprit meals and bolted. He said, i want you to write about the church of god union of sin. He said what to write about dthat he said you will find out im going to give you your first interview and i went to four years of interviewing former members and we have former members here today im going to ask them to stand and maybe even speak in a few minutes. About the hell they went through being members of this church. I would like to tell you a lot of things i will redo some of the things that happen ngbut th hardest thing was piecing it all together because i would get an interview and i would say what have i got. And since you were never a member of the ua he mentioned there are members of the book that reads more like a novel although its not a novel its based with a lot of interviews. How did you get your information. I started hunting pthese peopl like i hunt dear. I couldnt find them. All of a sudden people started calling me. And then people started to hear about it marie over there send me a message she said today just to remind me her first inquiry. She said i understand youre writing about the church of god Union Assembly and she said that was about three or four years ago. As i went through talking to these people i plan on doing a fiction book about a colt. When i got to talking to these stories were so horrific. The stories were so hurt moving it was an Emotional Experience to write this book. There were times that i just sat down and tcried as i was writing it because of what i was hearing from some of these people. And i will read some stuff here after a while. Did you find it difficult to get these former members to talk about their experiences like you said it was an emotional for you. We can only imagine how emotional it wouldve been for them to talk with you . Some of them were very hard to get to talk to. I would get a name phone number and call or go see them and went as far as to talk to people in knoxville want to talk to people because the Church Actually started from alabama down the east side of alabama down through east side of tennessee through georgia. I did have a tough time getting people to talk for a while. People i would call they would say im not telling you anything okay okay thats fine. An hour later id be off the phone. Because they were going to tony. Tthey just had to tell me. I recorded everything. Then it would take about a day to time all that so i got a dragon thing i could talk into and it printed for me. I have a filing cabinet with over a thousand interviews in it. I had interviewed over 100 people i lost count now. Since the book was published it was actually given in tennessee a few years ago and we rereadded took 150 pages out of it and certain things, ive got a lot more information that i could have put in it. Let me tell a little bit about the echurch. He was a young man in his 20s he was married in williamsburg kentucky and belong to the church of god mount assembly. He was kicked out of the church in 1917 about the same time the war of the United States declared war on germany. He was sent away from the church because he didnt believe in their doctor about the end of time. He gets with a guy named mcknight and they moved to Center Georgia and thats a about 30 miles north of atlanta. There is no longer a town its called cartersville now. Dalton is about 30 miles south sof chattanooga. He actually started the church he added about 20 more churches in 12 states. He added creatures and would travel from one to the other but his headquarters was in dalton. He built it up and his big thing was and at times would be in september 1961. So while everybody else was worried about the russians bombing us people of the church of god did more of that because they knew the time was going to end pretty soon anyway when jesus came back. He was a pretty good leader. He did take a lot of money from the people, he demanded a lot of money he didnt believe in tithing. I learned all this from interviews but also i learned about it in Court Records because there was a lot of stuff in Court Records that i had a lawyer friend help me he found hundred and 94 deeds that people had given their property Justin Whitfield county to the church. When he brought those to me and said heres a stack of ai said youre kidding. I went to all of those. I found all these people who have given their money the to the church. But why shouldnt they give their money. He said the times is going to end at 61 anyway. He had nine children and his fifth son was a guy named jesse and jesse was a taller guy he was very charismatic too. He started breaking the rules of the church. But this is where the story gets very interesting. He started trying to take control and talk about how he went about taking control. It wasnt just from the witnesses who talked to me. Theres Court Records on this. It was a rule that you could not, the church had a lot of rules. They didnt just go by the bible. He went by i have a long list of rules and i did have copies of the rules from the 1920s to the 1940s. I had rules all the way up to 1995. They always made a list of them every year and gave them out to people and people gave them to me. The ministers were not allowed to divorce. Or seremarry. Jesse in 1945 left, he was a pilot. They had nine airplanes. He was a pilot and he flew his piano player irene out to, i forgot somewhere out west where you get divorces, reno. Flew her out there and they stayed six weeks. She was a wife and had three children two daughters and a son and one daughter was just a year old and he had a wife and three sons and nobody knew they were married until he came back in the church. His daddy grandma for a while but cannot totally control him. He took over the church in detroit. They had churches in detroit, they had them in hamilton ohio, kokomo indiana. San Diego California and i thought there was only one church and i grew up in dalton georgia. Jesse started working his way back in. There was a man who became who was not a Family Member named huey h carmichael. He was the pastor of the Knoxville Church and they had about 10 churches in knoxville. Here in tennessee. Around marable. Got some members here from emarable church. Then we have a course to follow it. Intimacy. I cant remember the name of all the churches. In fact, they have 54 churches in 19 states. In over 15,000 members. They had a lot of money coming in. But jesse was able to take over carmichael man was the assistant moderator and ct was the moderator charlie thomas. His son was just a minister. His son moved back to dalton and he started doing something that actually started the call direction. I dont know if we can say its a cult, a lot of my professor friends recently say the word cold is overused. So we will let you people decide that like i let the readers decide that. He started taking and rebuking people physically. He would take his members up call them up grabbed him by the head, start shaking them, shake them until they fell on the floor the women script to come up. Some of them would urinate on themselves during this rebuking and he built this fear. His daddy try to control it because his daddy didnt do this. Some of the other ministers started doing this too. The first thing jesse did when he gets back is he rebukes cash carmichael. And forces him to leave and jesse takes over as moderator. Then when he has the rules of the church changed he has people start bringing all their money in and other than physically abusing them they have another rule that if anybody leaves the church they have to be totally ostracized. That meant if you are kicked heout of the church, he didnt just let you leave, if you are kicked out of the church then you wouldnt see your wife or children or your mother or father and there were people that i talked to that never saw the grandparents for 30 years after they were kicked out of the church. Or left the church. This is the story of this. 1961, i dont know why all the sudden, ct was in his late 70s by then. When the world didnt come to an end and jesus didnt come back in september of 61 he said we dont have a wife for him so asking women to come into his house and he would ask them to on clothes so he could pick out a bride for christ. Some of these women were married and some refused to do this. He built up such a thing in dalton because everybody was in a move back to dalton. People sold their houses in hamilton ohio and kokomo in san diego. They had nothing. They sold they gave the money to the Church Everything they had and they came down in the world didnt come to an end. So for some reason ct a lot of these relatives i talked to you and some of his grandchildren i talked to were willing to talk to me said they thought he had had many strokes. But i dont know why he decided to do this but it allowed jesse to kick him out of the church. He kicked his own father and mother out of the church and this was in 1961. He had over 1 million in assets at this time they own one fourth of whitfield wcount and Murray County which are two counties sidebyside which actually whitfield and murray touches the tennessee line. He had everybody, he had all this property. It wasnt a lot of liquid assets it was own property. Jesse started having to sell some of his property. I have the Court Records and where he sold the property off and everything. And of course when his daddy was out of the church most of the preachers and the other churches were his relatives. Thats what i read. So they started rebuking. And they didnt just review, he would take a sermon and start preaching and instead of talking about jesus, because i listened to some of it, some of them were sent to me, he would start belittling certain people and talking them down. I have a recording of one of them which i dont know if it will play here its just about 15 seconds that was sent to me just recently im going to let you listen to it and im going to tell you what he said and all the hollering and screaming how the people in the church saying amen and all that. See if you can hear it. [inaudible] im going to tell you what he said. Im going to tell you what he said. He was talking to a woman she is still alive and im sure shes in almost her 90s now because this happened, jesse died in 74. Thats another story. Which is in the book. This is a woman who they say was very very pretty. Her name was bessie and he just decided one day he was given preach against her and he says if you will say bessie you need to wipe that smile off your face i cant remember exactly he said its going to be your funeral next and that pretty face that god gave you hes going to rip it right off of you. So im going to let you listen to it again. Im sorry thats a different one. I was in a play for you later ill go back to that one. [inaudible] thats just hard to imagine if you dont mind im going to read you some of the stuff that happened. Its packed full and ive got enough for another book but im not going to ever write another book like this. While he is turning to that essection, it sounds like this when the real fear started when his son came in. Would we be correct in assuming rthat this is one a lot of the real fear really started . Right. They would actually kick people out and he encouraged divorce. And not even mention this or go read about it but if you were sitting in church one day and he says, okay brother roberts, thats not your erwife. Your wife is mayville over here. He would just change them around. During the church services. That happened occasionally. Let me read you one here about rebuking. This happened in 1961 of the most pitiful cases of rebuking happened at a tent revival in trying georgia right close to tennessee. In the late 60s when a young girl we would call her pam had a seizure it was known by the membership that pam had suffered from epilepsy most of her life while jesse was preaching that night pam had a seizure and jesse had the girl who was still convulsing brought down to the pews in the front where he grabbed her by the head and started slinging the slobbering child around. And screaming for the devil to come out of the poor sick kid. Theres a glare on it im trying to say. It wasnt long until about 50 men gathered around pam stomping their feet and screaming for the devil to come out. Finally after 30 to 60 minutes of this treatment black bile came flowing from pams mouth and nose. Jesse announced that it was the devil escaping to the childs ymouth. Jesse took full credit for the miracle over satan. Later people presented reports that it looked as if the young girl had actually thrown up blood and not the devil. However, when pam continued to have seizures jesse blamed it on pam herself saying that satan kept coming back into the child because she was not keeping the faith. One other thing they did i didnt mention here is they did not allow you abthey did not allow the people to see doctors. David, why did these members allow this to continue to happen . Why didnt they just leave or why did they just reported to the authorities . Thats really a good question and the thing i kept asking myself. Some of the members, one of them here can help me answer that question one night at my house. Basically if thats all you have and you got to realize these people are born into it. They hardly ever got new memberships. He encouraged big families and the people i knew had 10 or 12 brothers and sisters. He encouraged us. It was what we call socialization. This is all they knew. This is all they believed. If they left he told them this is the only way to heaven. They were going to go to hell if you left the church. Right robert . Also if you left the church, you left your family he would not allow them to have relationships with you so they stayed with the church. Robert, hold your hand up robert. I will let him talk to you in just a second. Robert told me when we when i was interviewing him about four years ago that was kind of like reading a book being in the church. And i will use this as an illustration. When you are in it, you cant read it. When you are out of it and get back you can read and once you are out you start seeing what was on it. Some of these people were kicked out, stayed out. But they had to give up a lot. They had to give up their family and this happened quite often. Ive got a few other things here that i could read if youve got any questions. We were talking about why, we would think if we were sitting there why couldnt we do something and that clearly understand hear you say that now i see where you lose your family they already given up es their homes they didnt know anything and another thing in reviewing and talking with david earlier is most of these people were born into this religion. So they dont know any different. You have to remember, this started in 1917 this was three generations of this family so some of these people were born into it and didnt know that there was another way or the right way to be treated and that was a big aha moment for me too to understand why some of them didnt say anything. And why dalton living at the headquarters i didnt even know about heit. People that have read this book and dalton said, i didnt know all that went t on. They were so secretive. They were just not allowed to talk about it with anybody else. Before i go into jesses death, i think weve still got some time. Got a lot to tell you. In 1960s, this is an email i got about five years ago. In the 1960s, jesses brother, reading the email and the email came to me from hamilton ohio in the 1960s jesses brother tom pratt church it was actually jesses first cousin but they thought it was his brother. He treated those members they are terribly making them work ungodly hours and then turning over most of the wages to him. My precious mother worked for him