ARMSTRONG FURTHER SILENCED WITH AID OF COURT

The Philadelphia Church of God, a religious group based in Edmond, Okla., which strictly adheres to the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong, had its efforts to publish and distribute the last written work of the late religious leader quashed by a federal appellate court in September.

A year before his death in 1986, Armstrong, at the age of 92, completed a 315-page book, Mystery of the Ages. Armstrong taught “the Bible was a coded book, not to be understood until our day” and that his Mystery of the Ages enabled the Bible to be “clearly understood.” The book’s copyright was bequeathed to the Worldwide Church of God, the church founded by Armstrong in 1934. Over 9 million copies of the book were distributed free of charge by the WCG.

In the months following Armstrong’s death, the Pasadena, Calif.-based WCG began a radical and protracted departure from the doctrine and practices of its late founder. This deviation led to the founding of the PCG in 1989 by two former WCG ministers in order to advocate the undistorted teachings of Armstrong.

While the WCG ceased distribution of the Mystery of the Ages in 1987, the PCG continued distributing existing copies of the book. In 1997, the supply was exhausted and the PCG began reproducing the book without permission of the WCG. Later that year, the WCG sued in federal court for copyright infringement. When a federal district court ruled in favor of the PCG, stating the sect was within “fair use” protection of the copyright law, the WCG appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

On Sept. 18, a three-judge panel of appeals court reversed the lower court’s decision and ruled 2-1 in favor of the mother church. Two members of the judicial panel stated that wholesale reproduction of the book by the PCG did not fall within the perimeters of fair use of a copyrighted work.

The dissenting judge, Melvin Burnetti, contended the PCG acted within the fair-use clause. “In this lawsuit, WCG appears less interested in protecting its rights to exploit MOA (Mystery of the Ages) than in suppressing Armstrong’s ideas which now run counter to church doctrine,” Burnetti said.

—MKG

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