{"id":1982,"date":"2020-04-14T19:20:42","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T19:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2020\/04\/14\/a-religion-reporter-profiles-a-charismatic-community-drawn-to-a-miracle-bible\/"},"modified":"2024-03-07T17:13:06","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T17:13:06","slug":"a-religion-reporter-profiles-a-charismatic-community-drawn-to-a-miracle-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2020\/04\/14\/a-religion-reporter-profiles-a-charismatic-community-drawn-to-a-miracle-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"A religion reporter profiles a charismatic community drawn to a “miracle Bible”"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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\n S<\/span>urprising stories spring from any number of places. Investigative or narrative or explanatory stories often start with curiosity sparked by a local news story or feature. That\u2019s what happened when an editor at Slate read a story in a Tennessee newspaper and sent staff writer Ruth Graham to chase a miracle in Dalton, Georgia.

The spark for that chase came in a story written late last year by Wyatt Massey<\/a> of the Chattanooga Times Free Press: For almost two years, charismatic Christians from around the region and country had been making their way to Dalton to bear witness to a Bible that was mysteriously oozing oil<\/a>. Oil is a freighted symbol in many religions, and plays a prominent role in the Bible. Its sudden, unexplained and recurring appearance in a Georgia man\u2019s Bible electrified the faithful, and became the centerpiece of a new ministry. It also was seen as a sign of Donald Trump\u2019s favor with God.

The Slate editor pressed Graham to learn more. Graham is an experienced hand at reporting on faith<\/a>. In addition to her work for Slate<\/a>, she has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe and a host of other publications.

Her resulting piece, \u201cThe Bible That Oozed Oil,\u201d<\/a> was published Feb. 27, 2020. It avoids the trap of easy cheap shots and roll-your-eyes dismissal of a \u201cmodern miracle.\u201d Rather, it is a complex weave of the intersection between politics and faith, and a non-cynical portrait of a community and some of the people in it.

It\u2019s hard to avoid dipping into a story that promises oil-oozing Bibles. But as I read, I was particularly impressed with how skillfully Graham shifted between the modes of the story. At one point it\u2019s a thumbnail sketch of a colorful town. Later, it serves as a brief foray into the history and role of oil in faith. Along the way, Graham doesn\u2019t hesitate to include a first-person point of view when it serves to deepen the story.

Graham answered a few of my broad questions, then worked with me to annotate her story itself. The answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

H<\/span>ow did this story pop up on your radar? Once it did, what was the timeframe for reporting and writing it?
<\/strong>My editor, Laura Bennett, read about the oil Bible in the Chattanooga Times Free Press last fall, and thought it had the components of a good longer feature. I did some reading and made some preliminary phone calls over the holidays, and then planned a three-day trip to Dalton for the end of January. The story ran a month later.

What part of this story made you think there was more to explore?
<\/strong>One thing that intrigued me right away was the fact that the oil Bible\u2019s proprietors seemed to tie the first oozing to Trump\u2019s rise. I had done some reporting on the self-styled \u201cprophets\u201d who have latched onto Trump<\/a>, so I was interested in this small, apparently independent movement that seemed to attach a kind of supernatural meaning to the election. I was also very interested in the fact that they didn\u2019t seem to be profiting off the oil financially. And of course, I wanted to know what was really going on with the oil itself.

You include some specific reactions in your story, but generally speaking, how did the residents and people profiled respond to your presence?
<\/strong>I spent quite a bit of time with three of the four leaders of the movement, and I would say they were simultaneously warm and guarded. Based on my initial phone conversations with some people close to the movement, I had decided to just go down and introduce myself on the scene to the main players, rather than trying to contact them in advance. I thought I would have more luck getting them to open up face to face, rather than cold-calling or emailing as a journalist from an unfamiliar secular news outlet. I think that was largely the right move, because they ended up being willing to have me around even if they weren\u2019t thrilled about it. I don\u2019t think they would have made plans in advance to meet with me. In fact, the owner of the bookstore that served as the de facto headquarters had agreed to meet with me, and then ghosted me when I got into town.

That was in contrast to the movement\u2019s followers, including people who attended the prayer service every week or were otherwise deeply invested. They were incredibly happy to have me there, and very willing to talk openly. They prayed and prophesied over me, which I tried to discourage. But I also didn\u2019t want to shut them down completely. I got the sense they were hoping to turn me into a true believer.

You’ve often written about religion before. In what ways, if any, did that help with the conception, writing or reporting of this story?
<\/strong>I can\u2019t imagine going into this story without having experienced and reported on\u00a0religion. For one, it helped me sort out what was unusual (uh, the Bible flowing with oil) from what is pretty standard in these settings (like speaking in tongues).

What kind of reaction have you gotten from readers and people featured in the story since it was published?
<\/strong>Very little, but they have not been communicative in general since Jerry<\/strong> was revealed to have been buying the oil. I got a brief but warm note from Leslie<\/strong> thanking me for sending the story, and otherwise haven\u2019t heard anything. And obviously, there are a lot of other things going on in the world right now.

Th<\/strong>e annotation:<\/strong>\u00a0Storyboard\u2019s questions are in red; responses from Graham in blue. To read the story without annotations, click the \u2018Hide all annotations\u2019 button, which you\u2019ll find just below the social media buttons in the top right-hand menu, or at the top of your mobile scr<\/em>een.<\/em><\/span>

\"Worshippers<\/a>
Worship services inspired by miracles believed to come from a Bible included ecstatic prayer and speaking in tongues<\/figcaption><\/figure>

The Bible That Oozed Oil<\/h1>

A small Georgia town, a prophecy about Donald Trump, and the story of how a miracle fell apart.<\/h3>
By Ruth Graham

Feb. 27, 2020

I<\/span>n the summer of 2016, God gave Johnny Taylor a prophecy. <\/a>This is a striking first sentence. Was it your lede from the start, or did it change during writing or editing?<\/span>This was my lede from the start, which is somewhat unusual for me. This story has such a distinct beginning, middle, and end that it felt very natural to start with the oil\u2019s mysterious arrival.<\/span><\/span>

It wasn\u2019t a specific vision, but something more like a promise. After the presidential election that fall, so the prophecy went, God would begin to \u201cposition\u201d Johnny and his group of friends to do great things. Months later, when Donald Trump won\u2014no surprise to Johnny\u2014God provided another message: After the inauguration, he said, \u201cI\u2019ll show you what I\u2019m doing.\u201d

Trump was inaugurated on Friday, Jan. 20, 2017. On Monday night, as they did most evenings, Johnny and a small, informal prayer group met to pray in the backroom of a small Christian gift shop called Grace 251. Johnny\u2019s girlfriend, Leslie, was there, along with her father, John Barker, and their friend Jerry Pearce and his wife, Joyce. They usually broke up by 8:30, but on this night they kept praying until after midnight. At one point, Jerry fell down on the floor for 45 minutes in a kind of catatonic state that he describes as being \u201cout in the Spirit.\u201d Within a few days, he told me, he opened his Bible to Psalm 39\u2014an uneasy poem of both praise and gloom that includes the words \u201cevery man at his best state is but vapor\u201d\u2014and noticed a small spot of oil. Joyce assured him the grandkids hadn\u2019t been near the book. It could only have come from God. <\/a>I love the memorable characterization here of Psalm 39, especially the use of the word “poem” … why did you choose to include it?<\/span>Jerry and others mentioned often that the oil started at Psalm 39, so it was obviously an important detail to them. I heard different theories on why God might have chosen that spot, but they didn\u2019t have a consistent explanation. The psalms are poems, and I was struck by how emotionally layered this one is, veering from praise to despair and grappling with death. It\u2019s beautiful.<\/span><\/span>

From then on, more oil appeared almost every time Jerry picked up the Bible, a leather-bound copy of the New King James translation. The oil moved to the back of the book, saturated the endpapers\u2014a heart-shaped splotch appeared over a map of Israel\u2014and then started at the beginning, in Genesis 1. Eventually Jerry had to put the book in a Ziploc bag, and then in a large plastic bin he bought at Tractor Supply.

News of the oil began to spread. The weekly prayer group started meeting in a larger room at the gift shop, then moved to a small performance space, and finally landed at a renovated movie theater downtown. Within three years, hundreds of people were gathering each week in the small town of Dalton, Georgia, to pray, socialize, and be healed. Believers say the translucent oil has cured skin conditions and cancer. They say it has generated crystals, changed color, and increased in volume\u2014inching upward in the Tupperware container over the course of a few hours. They say small vials of oil refilled themselves overnight. \u201cA Bible flowing with oil\u2014something many are calling a modern miracle\u2014continues to gather huge crowds,\u201d the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported this past November. Some believers moved to Dalton to be closer to the revival; others drove hours every week to see the oil. Leslie\u2019s father and his girlfriend got married in the prayer room. Meanwhile, the book kept oozing. By January 2020, Johnny and Jerry\u00a0estimated<\/a> that the Bible had produced more than 400 gallons of oil. <\/a>You’re diligent in crediting reporting by the Chattanooga Times Free Press. How important was their reporting to the story you ended up writing? How much contact did you have with writers or editors there?<\/span> Wyatt Massey\u2019s first story in the Chattanooga paper was what alerted my editor and me to this phenomenon in the first place. It was a fascinating, straightforward story reporting on a local phenomenon. For the bulk of my reporting process, I had no idea Wyatt was working on a follow-up story. Then a few weeks after I returned from Dalton, he published his bombshell follow-up<\/a> story, based on a tip he had gotten in response to the first story. As it turned out, Jerry Pearce had been spotted buying large quantities of mineral oil at the local Tractor Supply. By then I suspected Jerry was the key figure, but I couldn\u2019t prove it and didn\u2019t have those details, so Wyatt\u2019s story definitely changed the shape of my piece. And then, of course, the oil ministry essentially shut down, which again changed the trajectory of the story. In my first draft, I cited Wyatt\u2019s reporting but didn\u2019t interview him, but my editor suggested it would be good to get Wyatt\u2019s perspective as a player in the story.<\/span><\/span>

 

D<\/span>alton is in the far northwest corner of Georgia, closer to Chattanooga, Tennessee, than Atlanta. Downtown, a statue of Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston presides over Crawford Street, which runs past the Wink Theatre, home to the oil ministry\u2019s weekly prayer services. A local directory lists 94 churches in the town of 33,000. <\/a>This is quite a stat. Did you count the churches in the directory, or find the number referred to elsewhere?<\/span> I counted! I picked up a free local listings magazine at a restaurant in town, and there was a church directory in the back. I try to listen to local radio, watch local TV, and read local media as much as I can when I\u2019m on reporting trips.<\/span><\/span>

The cemetery, which still\u00a0hosts<\/a> an annual Confederate Memorial Day event, includes a large granite monument celebrating that \u201cGod Created His Masterpiece\u2014The Confederate Soldier.\u201d It was dedicated in 1999. <\/a>I love this thumbnail portrait of the town itself. Why did you choose to spend a few paragraphs on it, rather than just confine yourself to the immediate story?<\/span> I wanted to establish that Dalton is in some ways a very traditional Southern town, before complicating that depiction. And I just loved these particular details from the cemetery. It\u2019s not unusual to have a Confederate section in the cemetery, but it\u2019s something else to have it updated with much newer monuments. Visiting cemeteries is another habit for me when I\u2019m reporting; you can pick up a lot about local history, including demographics and the big family names in town.<\/span><\/span>

But Dalton does not fit all the stereotypes of a typical small Southern town. <\/a>This story covers people in this story (Southern, evangelical) who are sometimes written about in a facile or incomplete way; how deliberate were you in pushing beyond that for a more rounded view?<\/span> That\u2019s one of the big goals I have with my work overall, so it\u2019s something I\u2019m very deliberate about. It would have been very easy to write a snide story about the scene in Dalton. But that would be so much more boring than the truth. And it would have been especially cruel with a story like this, which was not widely known nationally. I don\u2019t see the point of introducing a scene to readers just to make fun of it.<\/span><\/span>

There\u2019s money in Dalton, and even a little glamour. For one, it\u2019s \u201cthe carpet capital of the world<\/a>.\u201d According to the Carpet and Rug Institute, a trade group headquartered in downtown Dalton, more than\u00a085 percent of American carpets and rugs<\/a>\u00a0are manufactured within a 65-mile radius of the town. In the \u201970s and \u201980s, the town was said to have the most millionaires per capita in the country. Marla Maples, the daughter of a local real estate developer and Elvis impersonator, was a homecoming queen here in that era. In 1991, she brought her boyfriend Donald Trump back home with her, where the future president\u00a0sat in the bleachers<\/a>\u00a0to watch a high school football game.

Jerry Pearce\u2019s \u201cflowing oil,\u201d as he calls it, turned the carpet capital into another kind of capital: the center of a spiritual revival. On a Tuesday morning in late January, about 600 people had filed into the Wink Theatre for a weekly prayer service that would last more than three hours. Rock Bridge Community Church, a nondenominational evangelical megachurch, bought the restored 1940s movie theater in the early 2000s and started loaning it to Jerry and Johnny for free last year. (The church took care to say it has no formal affiliation with the oil movement, and loaned the theater as an act of civic charity rather than a spiritual endorsement.) Christian worship music wafted from the speakers, while visitors chatted expectantly. Timothy Coyle had traveled from Walton, Kentucky, with his 13-year-old son, a friend, and their pastor. \u201cI\u2019ve felt the presence of God already,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things you need to be here to perceive.\u201d <\/a>This is a powerful quote. When did you approach Timothy Coyle? Did you identify yourself as a reporter immediately?<\/span> I talked with him before the service started, a few minutes before Johnny approached me and asked me to wait until afterward to interview people. I introduced myself as a reporter right away, and like most people at the service, he seemed happy to talk with me. I talked with a lot of people there, obviously, but kept coming back to this quote when I was writing.<\/span><\/span>

The Bible itself was stationed toward the middle of the room, in a wide aisle perpendicular to the stage. It sat on a folding table in its plastic tub, submerged in a few inches of oil. Two small Tupperware containers of oil sat on either side of it, where visitors could dip their fingers. Johnny Ageworth, an old friend of Jerry\u2019s, was among the handful of men unofficially guarding the tub. He said he had handmade the special hinged lid that fit on top of the bin to prevent overeager fans from scooping up the Bible without permission. \u201cWhen I first saw the [oil-producing] Bible, the Lord said, \u2018This is what you\u2019re going to be doing,\u2019 \u201d Ageworth said. He wore a pendant shaped like a cross, with a vial of the oil embedded in the center. <\/a>Another great quote. When did you talk to Johnny Ageworth?<\/span> Also before the service, when I approached the tub of oil in hopes of finding people who were close to the ministry.<\/span><\/span>

After the music, it was time for testimonies. Audience members stood up to share why they had come, and what the oil meant to them. The crowd was mostly white, but not overwhelmingly so: Like many charismatic church services, it attracted a noticeably multiracial audience. (Dalton itself is just\u00a040 percent<\/a> white.) <\/a>As someone who is unfamiliar with the charismatic tradition and wrongly assumed it’s white-dominated, this surprised me. Is it safe to say this is an area where your background reporting on religion helped to add important context for readers?<\/span> Yes, I knew this from my own experience and from other reporting, and I\u2019d also done some reading and some interviews with scholars before my trip. I was still very struck with it when I got there, though. Every church I have ever personally belonged to has said it wants to look something like that room, demographically: rich and poor, black and white, young and old, everyone worshipping together. No church I\u2019ve ever belonged to has actually done it. So I thought that was a significant detail. It also further complicates the portrayal of Dalton and this particular movement.<\/span><\/span>

A middle-aged black woman said she had anointed her adult son, who has been in a coma for two years, and noticed a \u201cchange in his countenance.\u201d A slight white man said he was heading to China soon and wanted to bring the oil with him. He alluded to the possibility that the oil could cure the coronavirus: \u201cI look forward to bringing back a good report!\u201d There were stories about the oil healing arthritis and dissolving tumors. Others said their vials of oil had spontaneously refilled. One woman said she had given it to a friend who traveled to North Korea and slathered three rocks there with oil, including one representing North Korea and one representing the United States. \u201cRight after that was when Trump met with Kim Jong-un,\u201d she said. The crowd murmured in awe.

The centerpiece of the service was the sprawling rite Leslie called \u201cministry time.\u201d This was what the audience had come for: spontaneous prayers, encounters with the oil, healing, communing with strangers with whom they felt safe. Most people stood up and started to move around the room, clustering together organically as the band continued to play. The emotion and excitement in the room was palpable. Some people lined up at the oil table for prayer; others huddled in small groups. Many people were speaking in tongues. Others collapsed in the aisles, \u201cslain in the Spirit\u201d sometimes for minutes at a time. (When this happened to women wearing skirts, helpers unobtrusively preserved their modesty by covering them below the waist with small blankets.) As the service progressed, Jerry removed the Bible from the oil and advanced slowly up a side aisle as people approached him for prayer. A tall, gruff-looking man wearing a T-shirt that said \u201cI Fell in Love With the Man Who Died for My Sins\u201d assisted him. (The man in the T-shirt later told me a story of seeing an angel in the sky outside the plant where he works.) Jerry pressed the dripping book on some supplicants\u2019 heads, who often fell backward, overcome. People cried, shook, prophesied, prayed, hugged, and told each other stories of illness and longing and heartbreak. Near the oil table, a woman who had collapsed suddenly woke up, laughing. <\/a>This is filled with telling details, such as the modesty blankets and the T-shirt logo. How long did you spend writing the passage about the service? What impression did you most want to convey to readers?<\/span> I was assuming that most Slate readers would not have been in a charismatic worship setting like this, so I wanted to do two things: Describe the atmosphere and the action, and provide a sense of what makes it appealing and exciting to the people drawn there. It\u2019s a sensory-rich environment, a little chaotic but also joyful and dramatic and, for many people, therapeutic.<\/span><\/span>

Officially, the prayer service ended at noon, but it was well after 1 p.m. by the time most people filed out of the theater. Johnny and Leslie were among the last to leave; he helped drain the plastic baptismal tub onstage, and she handed out more vials of oil to a few stragglers who approached her. Afterward, leaders and regulars walked over to the Oakwood Caf\u00e9, which was filled by the time we arrived.

Johnny and Jerry have been friends for more than 20 years. They met in church. Jerry retired more than a decade ago, after a career that included supervising a network of Shoney\u2019s restaurants and working in pest control. These days, he devotes himself fully to the Bible ministry, and to his own spiritual life. He told me he\u2019s not interested in politics or sports. \u201cI just don\u2019t have time for it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe time I\u2019d be doing that, my Bible would be laying on the table, not open.\u201d Johnny\u2019s career included a stint as a church administrative assistant. Both men have experience with charismatic revival movements: Johnny was raised Pentecostal, and Jerry spent several years in the 1990s working at a revival based out of a small church in Calhoun, Georgia. <\/a>Earlier you gave us a short-profile of the town; now there’s a little background on a couple of important people in the story. Why is it important for readers to have this background?<\/span> Jerry and Johnny are key players in this story, so it was important to introduce them as individual characters. Throughout the story, I\u2019m trying to suggest the context and history that could have fed into the creation of this movement, without drawing direct lines. So it was very interesting to me, for example, that Jerry had previously worked at a similarly long-running revival. I was able to find some local news coverage of that revival, though it didn\u2019t make the final cut of my story.<\/span><\/span>

Over an $8 plate of pork chops at the Oakwood, Johnny and Leslie talked about the growth of their ministry and what they believe God is doing in Dalton. The whole thing had started at Grace 251, the shabby-chic Christian gift shop\u2014where a large wooden sign saying \u201cBlessed\u201d retails for $450\u2014a block from the Wink. Susan Brown, the store\u2019s owner, had welcomed the group to meet in the shop in 2015. They took a storage room in the back and turned it into a prayer room, with soft lighting, an angel motif, and seating for at least 10 people; everything down to the paint color, a delicate blue, had been guided by instructions from God. In 2015, Leslie and her stepmother, Eileen Barker, told me, they began to see oil dripping from the walls there. Their prayers intensified until Johnny had his prophecy in 2016 and Jerry\u2019s Bible started to leak in 2017. God told Leslie they should meet on Tuesday mornings, so they did. Eventually, pastors around the country started inviting them to churches to display the oil and preach. On Monday nights, volunteers met at Grace 251 to fill vials of oil for the next day\u2019s service, and to pray.

To Johnny and Leslie and their friends, everything that happens in the news and in their own lives has a direct spiritual meaning. The conversation at the Oakwood was easy and comfortable, with mentions of prophecy interspersed with personal reminiscences and jokes. A retired friend named Darla, who travels with them when they bring the Bible to churches in the region, had heard about a prophecy that the Kansas City Chiefs would win the Super Bowl. (Five days later, they did.) I visited two days after Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash, and the group agreed that his death was bringing young people to Christ. God works in mysterious ways to draw people closer to him, they agreed. As for the oil, Johnny said, in the end it\u2019s incidental to the ministry. It\u2019s real, but it\u2019s also just a symbol. The oil itself doesn\u2019t heal; it merely points to a healing God. \u201cThis Bible is a literal manifestation of what you think is impossible: every prayer you prayed and gave up on,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s an awakening.\u201d <\/a>This is one of my favorite paragraphs because it conveys Johnny and the others’ worldview in some depth. How important was it to the story that you were able to do that?<\/span> This lunch was a very important piece of the reporting for me, because I got to hear Johnny and Leslie and their friends just chatting over a normal lunch, talking about the news and their work lives and families. It was very pleasant and relaxed, and I\u2019d almost do a double-take when someone would casually mention, say, a prophecy about who was going to win the Super Bowl. I wanted to give a sense of how thoroughly these beliefs influenced how they saw the world. I tried a few different quotes for the end of the paragraph, including one where Johnny teased Darla about drinking decaf coffee, and said regular coffee wouldn\u2019t keep her up at night if she believed it was decaf. I tried something kind of convoluted and corny about how substances only have power if you believe they do. My editor rightly pushed me to find something else. I like this quote because it\u2019s an example of Johnny de-emphasizing the oil itself as a magical substance, which was a recurring theme that is even more poignant in hindsight.<\/span><\/span>

 

O<\/span>il is a significant substance in many religions, including Christianity. Anointing the sick with oil is a sacrament in the Catholic Church; the words Messiah and Christ mean \u201canointed one.\u201d The Bible\u2019s many references to oil include a story<\/a>\u00a0in the second book of Kings about a poor widow whose single jar of oil multiplied so prolifically that she could pay her debts and live off the profits.

Dalton is not the only place where modern charismatic Christians have claimed that God has shown himself by causing oil to flow spontaneously from an unexpected source. In 1956, traveling Pentecostal evangelist A.A. Allen began to report that healing \u201cmiracle oil\u201d was\u00a0flowing from the hands<\/a> of people who attended his revivals. Miracle magazine, which Allen founded to promote his work, printed stories like one about Josephine Girdner, who said she suffered from painful nasal polyps until attending an Allen revival in California. Halfway through the service, she looked down at her hands and discovered they were covered with oil. \u201cAt that moment, my nose cleared up completely,\u201d her account reads. <\/a>I was largely unaware of the relationship between oil and Christianity, particularly its references in the Bible. How much of the detail of these grafs about its background were known to you, and how much did you have to research?<\/span> I was raised evangelical and am still an active church member, so I definitely knew that oil is a symbolically rich substance for Christians. I knew that miraculously flowing oil was a phenomenon in some modern Catholic settings. (In hindsight I wish I had briefly mentioned that in the story.) But I didn\u2019t know about the history of flowing oil in modern Protestantism. I got most of that from a fantastic 1979 book, \u201cAll Things Are Possible. The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America,\u201d by an historian named David Edwin Harrell, and then used his endnotes to find some original sources online, like a PDF copy of that issue of Miracle magazine.<\/span><\/span>

Candy Gunther Brown, a professor of religious studies at Indiana University, visited a small rural church where Jerry and Johnny showed the oil in early 2019, after hearing about it on social media. \u201cIt was one of the weirdest things I\u2019ve ever seen, and I\u2019ve seen some odd things,\u201d she said. \u201cThe whole thing struck me as very sincere, not like the televangelists who say, \u2018Give us a million dollars and we\u2019ll give you a vial of oil.\u2019 \u201d <\/a>Why was it important to include Professor Brown’s views in the story?<\/span> I didn\u2019t know when I contacted her that she had gone to see the oil! I wanted to get her perspective as a scholar with an expertise in contemporary Christian healing movements, among other things. We had a great conversation about that context. It was a nice surprise that she had also had experience with the oil. In general, I wanted to include at least a few informed, expert voices who would view the scene in Dalton a similar kind of essential skepticism as most readers, but could interpret it without cynicism.<\/span><\/span>

By all accounts, Johnny and Jerry have never asked for money in exchange for the oil. Anyone who came to Dalton for the prayer service received a free vial; many asked for more than one, and I didn\u2019t see a single person turned down. Until the volume of requests became too overwhelming, the group freely mailed the vials to anyone who requested one. They did not take an offering at the service, and there were no receptacles in the theater for accepting cash. If an attendee wanted to make a donation\u2014and some did\u2014they had to figure out on their own how to seek out a member of the leadership team and hand the money to them directly. When the group traveled to lead prayer services at other churches, those pastors often took up donations on Johnny and Jerry\u2019s behalf. (I spoke with a pastor who had hosted the oil and who confirmed that the group refused formal payment but allowed the church to take up a \u201clove offering\u201d for them at the event.) Donations eventually became significant enough that Leslie said Johnny was paid \u201ca very modest amount\u201d approved by a three-person board of directors, but she declined to say how much. He quit his job at a local hospital in 2017.

Leslie started a Facebook page and a bare-bones\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0called His Name Is Flowing Oil, but otherwise the group participated in few of the promotional opportunities that came their way. When Sid Roth, host of the Trinity Broadcasting Network show\u00a0It\u2019s Supernatural!\u00a0approached Jerry and Johnny, he said they needed to have something to sell on the show, so they declined, Jerry told me. (They\u00a0appeared on the show later<\/a>, when Roth found another guest with something to hawk on air.)\u00a0Andrew Brunson<\/a>, an American pastor who became a Christian cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre when he was imprisoned in Turkey and then freed under pressure from Trump, stopped by the store for prayer last year after hearing about the oil from a friend. \u201cThey appear to be sincere followers of Jesus Christ,\u201d Brunson told me. \u201cThere was not any hype. There did not seem to be any self-promotion, or any attempt to monetize.\u201d

Johnny speaks at conferences around the country, like last summer\u2019s USA Prophetic Convention in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, presided over by a Hindu-born prophet who\u00a0says<\/a>\u00a0oil flowed down from his head and out of his toes when he prayed to become a Christian. Christian celebrities like Brunson have made time to stop at the store. One believer in the oil told me that she saw Marla Maples come into Grace 251 with her family and dip her hands in the oil. (Maples\u2019 assistant did not respond to requests for comment.)

By Jerry and Johnny\u2019s own account, they have brought thousands of people closer to God. The movement is bigger and wilder than any church, the group believes. \u201cWe\u2019ve had every denomination you can think of,\u201d Leslie told a small group of visitors in the prayer room when I visited. \u201cNondenominational, witches, Muslims\u2014everyone\u2019s been back here.\u201d The group is not \u201creligious,\u201d Johnny likes to say. People who are religious \u201cdo everything a certain way at a certain time\u201d without leaving room for the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit. For a while, they displayed a large sign at the Tuesday services, reading: \u201cChurch has left the building.\u201d

The oil also conferred a kind of political status on the group and provided entree into a circle of Trump-supporting prophets who see themselves as intervening for the president in the spiritual realm. Johnny and Leslie said they were invited by\u00a0Christian right activist Andrea Lafferty<\/a>\u00a0to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, where Johnny said he surreptitiously spilled \u201ca lot\u201d of the oil in the chambers. (Lafferty did not respond to requests for comment, but a photo posted to the Facebook page of her organization, Women for a Great America,\u00a0appears<\/a>\u00a0to show Jerry and Johnny among a group gathered to pray on the top floor of the Senate building during the hearing.)

In late 2018, Johnny received another \u201cvision<\/a>\u201d related to Trump, which he shared with a pastor in North Carolina, who posted it online:
President Trump was standing outside in the dark and a big spotlight was shining on him like he had broken out of prison. He was being fired at and was taking all the shots and being hit by bullets being fired from the dark from the prison. Pastors and Christian leaders were standing behind him kind of pushing him out in front of them. They were praising him for standing up for them. Then the Lord spoke and said, \u201cHe is not supposed to be standing up for you. You are supposed to be standing with him. When you stand with him, persecution will come like it has come on him. When you stand with him, I will back you up. I will defend you. I will stand with you. If you don\u2019t stand with him, they will kill him.\u201d<\/blockquote>
No one mentioned Trump onstage at the prayer event at the Wink Theatre. Some attendees wore Trump buttons, stickers, or red MAGA hats, but that\u2019s not out of the ordinary at a large gathering of Southern Christian conservatives. \u201cFor me, it was like the president opened the window,\u201d said Elgonda Brunkhorst, a retired nurse at the Wink Theatre. \u201cAnd Jesus went, \u2018There you are, America. I\u2019ll give you a new start.\u2019 \u201d Brunkhorst felt electrified when Trump\u00a0referred to Psalm 133<\/a> in his inaugural address\u2014a chapter, she pointed out, that refers to oil running down from the head of a high priest. <\/a>Was there any consideration on your own part \u2014 or discussion with editors \u2014 how prominently to include the details about political beliefs? Other reporters may have been tempted to feature them prominently; here it’s very much one piece of a larger story.<\/span> I initially thought this might be an even bigger part of the story. It was certainly a big part of the initial impetus for exploring the scene in Dalton. When I actually started reporting, I came to believe that politics was not the primary motivation for either the ministry leaders or the people drawn to view the oil. That said, I don\u2019t want to underplay it. For the leaders especially, I think it conferred a certain sense of national and even global importance to their work. I was surprised to learn about some of the doors it opened for them, even though it didn\u2019t grant them any real power. But I could certainly see why they believed they were part of something much larger than themselves.<\/span><\/span>

 

I<\/span>n 2017, someone affiliated with the oil ministry sent a sample to a lab. Testing apparently found it was a substance similar to mineral oil\u2014but not identical to it. (Only partial results and secondhand references to that test have been posted online<\/a>.) Several visitors at the prayer service proffered these results as proof the oil is not of this world. Others whipped out their phones to show me photos of strange crystals that have appeared in certain vials at portentous moments.

On my last day in Dalton, I looked up Jerry and Joyce\u2019s address online and drove to their house. Jerry keeps the Bible at the house between showings; he told me he sometimes keeps it in his garage, and other times inside. The Pearces live in a one-story brick townhouse in a modest gated community. I drove in behind the mail truck and knocked on the door. After several minutes, Jerry\u2019s wife, Joyce, opened the door a crack. She did not look happy to see me. When I told her I was a reporter working on a story about the oil, she said Jerry was down at Grace 251\u2014and no, I couldn\u2019t come in. <\/a>Had you spoken with Joyce at all previous to this encounter?<\/span> No, and I didn\u2019t afterward, either.<\/span><\/span>

When I drove to the store, Jerry asked me right away how I\u2019d found his address. We had met briefly at the theater, but hadn\u2019t talked in depth yet. His answers to my questions were short and wary. He wouldn\u2019t say where he thought the movement was going, why he thought God had chosen Dalton, or how, exactly, he observes the plastic bin refilling with oil. \u201cWe\u2019ve done what the Lord said,\u201d he said. \u201cI am just a layman. I\u2019m just trying to steward that Bible. That\u2019s what the Lord has asked me to do and that\u2019s what I do.\u201d Before I said goodbye, he said something Johnny had said to me earlier: \u201cI would just ask you to not add to or take away\u201d\u2014to just let the story be what it was.

Less than a week after I left Dalton, that story changed. First, Leslie posted a notice to the ministry\u2019s website, announcing that the Bible had stopped producing oil on Jan. 10, weeks before I arrived. Because there was no new supply of oil to hand out, the last weekly service at the Wink Theatre would take place on Feb. 11. Then, on Feb. 13\u2014Jerry\u2019s 77th\u00a0birthday\u2014the same Chattanooga Times Free Press writer who had covered the oil Bible in November\u00a0published\u00a0another r<\/a>eport: An anonymous source told the writer that Jerry Pearce was a regular customer at a nearby Tractor Supply store. And he\u2019d been seen purchasing large containers of clear oil.

Two managers at the store \u201cvisually identified\u201d Jerry to the reporter and confirmed that he bought \u201cgallons of mineral oil.\u201d This time, a chemical analysis performed for the paper by the University of Tennessee\u2013Chattanooga found that Jerry\u2019s oil was indeed nearly identical in chemical structure to the brand of mineral oil sold at Tractor Supply. When Wyatt Massey, the Times Free Press reporter, questioned Jerry about the evidence after a prayer service in January, Jerry \u201cgot pretty upset pretty quickly,\u201d Massey told me. \u201cHe scoffed, like, \u2018This is crazy, this is stupid.\u2019 \u201d

Jerry did not respond to multiple texts and voicemails from me over the course of the past several weeks. But I talked to Leslie one last time, a few days after the newspaper story came out. She sounded shellshocked. She and Johnny had been on the phone constantly, talking with followers and canceling their future appearances at churches and conferences. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to do anything that would harm anybody,\u201d he\u2019d said. \u201cThis is like a big bomb thrown in the middle of everything.\u201d The pastor of Rock Bridge Community Church, Matt Evans, who had loaned the Wink Theatre to the oil ministry, posted a\u00a0response online<\/a>\u00a0to the controversy, describing the ministry\u2019s \u201cmistakes\u201d as a reminder of the importance of \u201cbiblical leadership structures\u201d\u2014a rebuke, if a gentle one, to Jerry and Johnny\u2019s pride in rejecting the fetters of institutional Christianity.

Jerry denied the newspaper story completely, saying the managers were lying. But Leslie said he had admitted to the group that he bought mineral oil one time. (She later reported this on the group\u2019s website.) When the oil stopped producing a while, he had panicked, bought some oil, and stored it in the garage. But he told his friends that \u201cthe Lord didn\u2019t let me do anything with it\u201d and he had never used it. \u201cWe\u2019ve been over and over and over it again [with him],\u201d Leslie said. \u201cIs that it? And he has said the same thing over and over again.\u201d

Leslie said she didn\u2019t know what to think now. If Jerry was refilling the oil, \u201cit will cause people to be more jaded or more skeptical about anything God is doing. It\u2019s like a black eye for God.\u201d\u00a0No one was angry at Massey, she said; he was just doing his job. And she wasn\u2019t angry with Jerry, either. But she wanted to know the truth. If it\u2019s not true, her friend is being falsely accused. If it were true that he was refilling the oil himself, she would be sad and afraid for him. \u201cThat\u2019s not the Jerry I\u2019ve known in the past at all,\u201d she said, her voice quavering. \u201cIf it\u2019s true, then the enemy has gotten a hook in him somehow.\u201d

I told Leslie what I had been wondering when I visited Dalton. Wasn\u2019t it plausible, I asked, that Jerry had found a mysterious spot in his Bible, and when he saw how excited people were, and how their faith was strengthened by the miracle, he convinced himself it was OK to add more oil himself? Maybe he even believed God was telling him to do it. Jerry and Johnny and Leslie were always emphasizing that the oil wasn\u2019t magical, and it can\u2019t heal on its own. It was just a sign pointing to the greatness of God. I could understand, I said, if Jerry thought he was helping God along. If the oil itself was never the point, then was it really so bad to refill it? <\/a>I was moved by this exchange, which goes beyond a just-the-facts style of interviewing and is more conversational. Is that something you aim for when talking to people for stories?<\/span> At this point we had spent quite a bit of time together, so it really did feel like a conversation. To me, the scenario I laid out to her was the most plausible explanation of what had happened, and I also believe it doesn\u2019t reflect too poorly on Jerry. I was somewhat surprised that Leslie was so open to accepting the paper\u2019s reporting, so I thought there was a chance she would agree this scenario was plausible. Including this part of our conversation in the story was also a way of me to offer my own best guess about the situation without stating it as fact.<\/span><\/span>

Leslie was quiet for a long time. Did that description of Jerry\u2019s mindset make sense to her? I wondered. She finally answered: \u201cNo.\u201d She believed she had seen the oil expand on people\u2019s hands. She had heard too many stories about it growing in independent vials. None of it made sense, she said. <\/a>What prompted you to devote most of the final few paragraphs to Leslie and her reactions to what had happened?<\/span> It was partly because Leslie was the only leader speaking with me at this point! But I also thought her obvious heartbreak and confusion was very poignant.<\/span><\/span>

At Grace 251 on the day I left Dalton, I looked down and saw that my notebook had a splotch of oil on it. For a split second, my jaw hung open. Then I felt ridiculous. I\u2019d been shaking hands with people whose fingers were doused in oil. But I\u2019ll admit I was still, for that one instant, weirdly energized. <\/a>You use first-person occasionally throughout the story, but share something more personal here. Why did you include it?<\/span> This was the part of the story that my editor and I reworked the most. It was hard to figure out how to end the story, since so much of the dramatic final action\u2014the newspaper bombshell, the ministry closing\u2014happened out of my view. I wanted to get back to why this movement was so appealing to so many people before it fell apart. I came back to this split second where I almost believed it myself.<\/span><\/span>

The store was homey and bustling with people who had found each other because they believed in the same wildly improbable phenomenon, which brought them community and hope. In a few weeks, it would all be over. In that moment I remembered something that a woman named Leah Lesesne, who drove from Atlanta to visit the oil a few years ago, had told me in December: In the end, she wasn\u2019t sure how much she cared whether the oil Bible was real. \u201cIt has brought people closer to God, it has brought people healing, it has rekindled people\u2019s faith and curiosity,\u201d she said. \u201cEven if one day it\u2019s proven that all this was a sham.\u201d <\/a>What made you choose this quote as your ending?<\/span> I interviewed Leah weeks before I traveled to Dalton, and as soon as she said this to me, I thought, \u201cAha, there\u2019s my kicker.\u201d I played with some other endings, but it turned out I was right. I loved that she expressed skepticism and belief in the same breath.<\/span><\/span>

\"\"<\/a>
Church leader Jerry Pearce lays the oil-soaked Bible on the head of worshippers gathered at the Wink Theater in Dalton, GeorgiaMatthew Longairc (left) prays while Jerry Pearce (center) places the Bible on his head during a service at the Wink Theatre in Dalton, Georgia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

urprising stories spring from any number of places. Investigative or narrative or explanatory stories often start with curiosity sparked by a local news story or feature. That\u2019s what happened when an editor at Slate read a story in a Tennessee newspaper and sent staff writer Ruth Graham to chase a miracle in Dalton, Georgia. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"topics":[],"authors":[11],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-1982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-annotation-tuesday","authors-trevor-pyle"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA religion reporter profiles a charismatic community drawn to a "miracle Bible" - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2020\/04\/14\/a-religion-reporter-profiles-a-charismatic-community-drawn-to-a-miracle-bible\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A religion reporter profiles a charismatic community drawn to a "miracle Bible" - Nieman Storyboard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"urprising stories spring from any number of places. 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