Dr. Hymers and Robert L. Hymers III Answer Me.

Their response seems to be, “that woman cusses, and she was a Marxist at the age of 20.” Which, okay. I do, and I was. You got me, G-Man! (Unsafe link to cult leader’s web page.)

Hymers’ congregant (and sometime computer consultant) Kyu Lee emails me:

Dear Ms. McCann:

This is to advise you that Dr. R. L. Hymers, Jr. and Robert L. Hymers III have answered your attacks. You may read their answer on Dr. Hymers’ website at http://www.rlhymersjr.com/AnswertotheCritics.htm (top of the page in blue).

K. D. Lee

Even through another member of Baptist Tabernacle, that is initiating contact, which is in general the fastest way to get me to blog about the Hymerses. (The other two things that will get me to do it are when I get heart-wrenching stories from former cultists that I’m given permission to publish [with names redacted, natch], or when Dr. R.L. Hymers gets media coverage.)

Their response includes the pictures of me with my lovely Ruger revolver, which I have advised them they must remove, as both images are copyrighted.

This is the Hymers’ statement, in its entirety:

For the record, under the pseudonyms of “Scooge” and “Little Miss Attila” Joy Whittemore McCann has attacked my father repeatedly on the internet. Because her attacks are religiously motivated, I consider them to be hate speech. She has used veiled words about “guns” and “Huguenots” (killed by the thousands) to harass and stalk my father. Since this is hate speech, I have filed a report with the FBI. I demand that she stop stalking my father. I demand that she stop attacking him on the Internet. {That was the original statement they placed there last summer; new material is below.}

False allegations have recently been made against my father by Joy Whittemore McCann on her blog. She has stated that my father is a liar, threatened people’s lives, harmed people, and accused him of leading a “cult.” {I never said he threatened anyone’s life. I said he ruined people’s lives. Big difference. He does, however, apppear to be a congenital liar.} But Ms. Whittemore McCann only attended my father’s church for a few months when she was 14 years old, and has not had any direct contact with my father for about 35 years. {Actually I can document the exact dates I was attending Open Door Community Church, since I saved every note Dr. Hymers sent me, and there were about a dozen of them, spaced over a year and a half to two years.} She wouldn’t know him if she saw him on the street.

Oh, yes I would. Even without that awful toupee he used to wear back in the day. I’d know him anywhere.

On the other hand, I have lived with my father for my entire life of nearly 27 years, and have attended the church since I was born. Therefore, I am more acquainted with my father and his ministry than any other person except the other members of my immediate family. The reader should judge for himself Ms. Whittemore McCann’s credibility by considering some of the statements she has made on her website, such as the following.

(Please be advised that some of her words are very obscene. I really hate to put these words here because they are extremely vulgar. I have only put them here so that you may evaluate for yourself what kind of person this is who is attacking my father. Please do not read the following statements if her obscene language will offend you. These are the exact words of the woman attacking my father on her blog.)

“At the age of 20…I joined the Communist Workers Party (http://littlemissattila.com/?p=15676) …when I was that age I joined the Communist Workers Party, went to Marxism study groups, and marched in rallies” (http://littlemissattila.com/?p=15313).

“What’s the benefit of the Gospel of Mark, other than speed-reading?” (http://littlemissattila.com/?p=15233). {Ha! It’s just like a real Gospel, only smaller. A little, bitty Gospel. Keep in mind that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the one sin that cannot be forgiven, and implying that the Spirit has no sense of humor comes perilously close.}

“F*ck Chris Matthews. Hard, sideways, and without lube. Fucking asshole. Oh, and: fuck him some more” (http://littlemissattila.com/?p=13426). [Asterisk in the first word is hers].

“…makes me want to slit my fuckin’ wrists. Then I remind myself that homicide, rather than suicide, is the appropriate response” (http://littlemissattila.com/?p=14305).

“My handgun whispers to me. It says, ‘shoot, shoot, shoot to kill'” (http://littlemissattila.com/?p=13767).

It is statements like the last two that make me fear that she may hear her handgun “whisper to her” to shoot my father.

Standup comics must beg you Hymers guys to be in their audiences: “Is this an audience, an oil painting, or a bunch of psuedo-Christian cultists?”

Below are two photographs of her with her handgun, which she calls “Bathsheba,” after an Old Testament figure.

Nope, mind-reader: I call it that after the chararacter from “Bertha Butt Boogie,” an old 1970s period-piece bit of rock and roll, which happens to be a guilty pleasure of mine. It’s from long before you were born, as was my entire experience in your father’s abusive cult.

These two pictures of Ms. Whittemore McCann and her pistol “Bathsheba” are taken directly from her blog site (http://littlemissattila.com/?p=15786).

Those are copyrighted images; pull ’em down, boys.

As for cussing, this is what David Ferrell of the Los Angeles Times wrote about Hymers in a profile that ran in August of 1988:

A lifelong resident of the Los Angeles area, Hymers has been a Baptist since he first found religion as a teen-ager, when a neighbor began taking him along to church. That neighbor, Henry M. McGowan, remembers Hymers as a “pretty wild” youth who had been raised in an environment of “bickering, drinking, swearing-just a home life that no child should be subjected to.” {I know the feeling. I thought I’d found an escape, too—but it turned out that the people I was placing my trust in were running an abusive cult.}

McGowan and his wife, Joyce, who lived in Huntington Park, were devout Christians. They all but adopted Hymers. “He was very susceptible to a decent home, to decent people who did not swear, people who went to church,” McGowan said. “The Lord just took charge of his life.” {Well, something did.}

. . . . . . . .

. . . [A]mid bitter infighting, the organization ultimately crumbled. Defectors say Hymers’ aggressive style displayed itself in hostile fits of anger. Former followers say Hymers regularly lashed out by striking them or humiliating them before crowds.

Tells of Slapping

R—— J. G—–, 33, who said he dropped out of UCLA after joining Hymers’ organization in 1978, recalled an occasion when he and one of Hymers’ pastors, J— K—–, arrived for a meeting at an apartment that Hymers then rented in Westwood. K—– was talking loudly outside and Hymers flung open the door to greet them, G—- said.

“He swung the screen door out and just slapped K—– across the face and called him a stupid Jew and a kike and practically dragged him in by the collar,” G—- said. In the 3 1/2 years in Hymers’ church, he said, “I saw him hit people or push people more than 50 times. It’s just hard to catalogue them all.”

Hymers called the charges lies, saying he is nonviolent and never used anti-Jewish slurs in his life. “Let them document it,” he said. “I say, `Why did they stay? Why didn’t they prosecute me?’ ”

K—–, 32, who was a top lieutenant for Hymers before quitting the organization in 1981, said he did not recall the particular incident cited by G—-. However, K—– said, Hymers “used that expression `kike’ many times. I remember being pushed, shoved and hit several times.”

K—– said followers tended to forgive Hymers because they believed that his Christian message overshadowed the incidents. “We’d say, `Well, Hymers isn’t perfect, but who is? He’s a great man and it’s for a great cause.’ ”

At one point, Hymers’ following rose to reach crowds of 1,000 or more at some Sunday lectures when the group was meeting in Hollywood, West Los Angeles and downtown. He used sensational posters to draw visitors to a school auditorium in Hollywood. One said, “Sex deviants-live! Jewish community outraged!” Another featured an eye-catching photo of Marilyn Monroe. “Sex after death?” it asked.

Institutes Changes

The posters were an attempt at emulating the lurid fundamentalist flyers of years ago, Hymers said.

But Hymers changed the church name, changed his approach and moved downtown after much of the congregation left. Trouble in the church subsided, according to some members, but still there were moments of rage and conflict.

Shana Couch, 25, who left the church near the end of last year, complained that her salvation was questioned when she asked to give up her role as a church singer after her husband entered the hospital with a heart problem. “They said there was something wrong with me,” she said. “They put me into counseling.”

Earlier this year, a Glendale resident named Robyn Singer filed a court complaint against Hymers arising from an incident in 1987 in which Hymers was trying to pull his car out of a convenience store parking lot. Hymers’ car was blocked by Singer’s, leading to an argument between the two.

`Slapped Me Across the Face’

“Hymers intentionally slapped me across the face and said I would burn in hell and damned me to hell,” Singer said in her complaint. “He said he was a minister and had the power to cause me spiritual hell. He also said God sanctioned his behavior and he could lie and deny his acts because he would be shielded by God of any liability.”

Hymers, recalling the incident, said he spoke angrily to Singer. “Wouldn’t you?” he asked. “Anything wrong with that?”

But he called the report “as wild and insane as it could be. Of course none of that happened. I wasn’t even near her. It sounds like something out of an old Boris Karloff movie or something. . . . It’s just something I think would be out of character. I can’t imagine myself saying that.”

Hymers, in a more reflective moment, allowed that he could imagine simply “telling someone to go to hell . . . because I’m a kind of gutsy and earthy person. I might say, `Listen, you, why don’t you go to hell.’ I might say that because in my background there was a lot of cussing. I wasn’t raised in primroses and with flowers in the house. I was raised in a rough background.”

Me too. But I don’t tell people that I have the power to discern whether they are “saved” or not, and can tell when they are going to hell.

With, you know—a few exceptions.

UPDATE, 6/8/10: I’ve been advised by one of the top blawgers that the Hymerses’ use of my photos may fall into the of “fair use” (my understanding of which had been incomplete), and therefore may not constitute infringement on my copyright. So I shall leave the pix alone, for now, despite the fact that they jazz up Hymers’ “Response to Critics” web page considerably. After all, it’s free advertising for this blog, though as one might expect Hymers and his son don’t throw out a lot of traffic. And I’m happy to give him some imaginary persecution to rant about from the pulpit. What a sad man.

Tagged as: Baptist Tabernacle, Dr. R. L. Hymers Jr., Fundamentalist Army, Jeremy J. Osher, Open Door Community Church, R.L. Hymers Jr., Robert L. Hymers III, Robert Leslie Hymers III