Stretching the Truth

I recently listened to a podcast by two young women about Jim Baker and The Source Family, and to the credit of one of the young women she had made an effort to find newspaper articles in search of factual information about Baker, and she talked about finding this article in the San Bernardino Sun from 1955 https://www.newspapers.com/clip/6134211/1955-nov-6-zimm-judo/ about the time that Jim Baker judo chopped and killed his neighbor in a dispute about the way that Baker took care of the guy's dog, while the guy was in jail, and she also referenced the article saying how Baker had claimed to the reporter that he had won 'the 1948 World Judo Championship with Wild Bill Zim of Argentina' fueling my interest to find out if that was a valid claim made by Baker.  Here's another newspaper clipping from 1955 where Jim Baker made the same claim.

With a simple google search I found a website about Wild Bill Zim, a wrestler from New York (not Argentina) who did participate in a judo exhibition with Baker in 1948 and quickly lost to Baker, for obvious reasons such as Wild Bill was a wrestler and did not practice judo and wasn't proficient at it, as was Jim Baker.  So, the exhibition wasn't a World Judo Championship by any means which makes you wonder why Jim Baker would make such a claim.  I don't recall Jim Baker ever talking about any of his past exploits and if he did, I was not present and only learned about them years after The Source Family had disbanded and one person took it upon herself to try and resurrect the whole thing.  I had never heard of Jim Baker being called 'the world's strongest boy', as my old friend, Robert aka Omne stated in the 2012 film.  But, considering Jim Baker's younger days growing up during the Great Depression in Cincinatti at a time when people would often claim being 'the strongest' of this or that; it came as no surprise that Baker may have elaborated about himself.  Here is an interesting link about 'the world's strongest men from around the time when Jim Baker was growing up https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/early-strongmen-photographs/#:~:text=21-year-old%20Swansea%20tailor%20Harry%20Pelta%2C%20winner%20of%20the,supports%20a%20200-pound%20motorcycle%20and%20its%20rider.%201932..  Baker was trying to make a name for himself, and so I can understand why he might have embellished his past accomplishments in order to appear as the strongest or a world champion of something.

Wild Bill Zim's son found several newspaper articles in the Cincinatti Times from 1946 through 1949 about Jim Baker and sent them to me and I've included links to those articles.  I found contradictions about Baker's father, where in the San Bernardino Sun article Baker told the reporter that his father was a Chicago detective killed by gangsters, and in another article it states that Baker's father was a professional wrestler and that Jim lived with him in Vallejo, California in 1938.  It was my understanding that Jim Baker's father left him and his mother in Ohio when Baker was very young, and that was what the majority of former members like me understood to be true.  In Charlene Peter's book about the Source Family she wrote that Baker's father was a firefighter. 

There is also the claim that Jim Baker earned a Silver Star at Guadalcanal during World War II for shooting down 13 Japanese bombers, although some have searched the Army database for Marines awarded a Silver Star and could not find a citation for James Edward Baker.  Although, an article about weightlifting in Strength and Health magazine from 1945 about Jim Baker mentions him 'sporting a decoration for conspicuous gallantry'.  Here is that article: 

 Another version was that Baker had punched his commanding officer while on the USS Chicago and was being taken to the brig when the Japanese began to attack the ship, and that he didn't actually receive a Silver Star citation, due to him assaulting an officer. 

At least these newspaper articles from 1940's Cincinatti gave me more insight into the kind of young man that Jim Baker was and how in one article he was described as being 'a hustler in capital letters' https://www.newspapers.com/clip/20267738/1949-jan-26-jim-baker-judo-champ-muscle/?fbclid=IwAR1FFOz-e31eieBuMePXS0eI1IeasoyB-ibf6838FSO5uNpjXgNhusHThU8---a young man into weightlifting and physical fitness who taught judo and joined the Marines who may have stretched the truth about his accomplishments and titles.  It's easy to see how stretching the truth served Jim Baker's purpose again when he gathered a group of much younger, adoring followers around him convincing them that he was their 'earthly spiritual father' and then deciding to have multiple 'spiritual wives' in addition to his only legal wife at the time, Robin Baker to have them all wait on him and pamper him in obedience and supplication.    

Here are more articles that mention Jim Baker from The Cincinatti Times.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120347408/1946-oct-21-baker-teaches-co-eds/?fbclid=IwAR10dbiWcRojF1eAHkyrtJqm4Z6HuqSek_Z8gY1NzmTvt_vV8fA_EHyHXCw

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120349123/1949-feb-8-jim-baker-vs-zim-judo/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120349333/1949-feb-9-baker-vs-zim-judo/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120349444/1949-feb-11-baker-vs-zim-judo/

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120349605/1949-feb-12-judo-jim-beat-zim-quickly/

I found this website with historical photos taken at Venice Beach from 1949 when bodybuilding and weightlifting were hugely popular which shows the health and fitness culture that Jim Baker had become a part of when he was in Los Angeles. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/original-muscle-beach-1949/?fbclid=IwAR26MEWky-LZic1A7CaH_pMiChiYFYdK_-jcATxxrORb2XG_akM_qFE3XuM

Anyway, I believe in giving credit where credit is due to Jim Baker for whatever he did accomplish in his life.  It's just that I cannot give him credit for being 'an earthly spiritual father' or a 'wise and enlightened spiritual teacher' when he repeatedly transgressed the personal and sexual boundaries of many of the women, after he formed The Brotherhood of The Source; especially young women who were 14, 15, 16 and 17 years old.  Whether or not it was the early seventies when 'free love' and 'sexual liberation' abounded as part of the counterculture; it doesn't excuse the fact that Jim Baker, the father of a daughter should have known better.