What follows is an instructive story about the mind of a prohibitionist.

In addition to working on a general hypothesis that prohibitionists are by nature megalomaniacs, I am also working on another which posits that many of them are hiding something serious.

A third hypothesis, that they are all leftists, has little relevance to the following — although communitarianism, which fits here nicely — certainly does. Leftism and communitarianism need each other in order to work.

You might have heard of the town of Zion, Illinois, north of Chicago. It is very close to the Wisconsin border and the coastline of Lake Michigan. Today, it’s just another pleasant town and is home to conservation areas as well as a large resort and conference centre complex.

However, its beginnings were quite different. A Scot, John Alexander Dowie, founded the town in 1900.

Dowie’s outlook on humanity

Dowie was born a Congregationalist and appears to be yet another Calvinist (e.g. Jehovah’s Witnesses’ founder Charles Taze Russell and the Crystal Cathedral’s Robert Schuller) who defected from doctrine and Scripture for his own glory.

Born in 1847, he moved with his parents from Edinburgh to Adelaide (Australia). There, he worked for his uncle who owned a shoe business before moving on to other employment where he did well financially. Dowie returned to Edinburgh to study theology although he was ordained a Congregationalist minister in Alma in Southern Australia in 1872. He married and had three children, only one of whom lived into adulthood.

Dowie had interesting influences and perspectives during his life of 59 years:

– His father was one-time president of the Total Abstinence Society in Adelaide

– He married his cousin

– He left the Congregational Church to become an independent evangelist

– He considered himself a faith healer and disparaged other faith healers

– He was involved with the Salvation Army for a time

– He managed to cause a schism in a Melbourne church because of his authoritarian leadership

– He spent several weeks in jail for conducting an unauthorised procession

– He moved to San Francisco in 1888

– Later, in Chicago, he set up his own tabernacle and healing homes

– In 1896, he founded the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church where he forbade his followers from:

– drinking

– smoking

– eating pork

– consulting doctors

– taking medicine

– He stylised himself as Elijah the Restorer with robes modelled on Aaron’s in the Book of Leviticus (see the illustration above)

– He fought off lawsuits for practising medicine without a licence

– In 1900, he founded the town of Zion, where his church was the only one in town

Zion – total control

Dowie owned every property in Zion. As part of his insistence on the aforementioned outer holiness, he also forbade residents from setting up theatres, dance halls and doctor’s surgeries.

This is what stood at the city limits (another version here):

The notice carries the name W G Voliva. Wilbur Glenn Voliva, also a man of the cloth, joined Dowie’s church, later moved to Zion and became his lieutenant.

By then, Dowie had embraced a lavish lifestyle, including a 25-room mansion. He considered himself akin to a prophet for the end-times and sent several missionaries to South Africa, a place he had not himself visited. They established the Zionist Churches, which still exist today. Dowie’s openness to racial harmony — probably the only good thing one can say about him — and his experiential pre-Pentecostalist church proved popular. Even today, the Zionist Churches around the world hold Dowie in high regard.

In 1903, Dowie found out about his opposite number in Islam, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who believed himself to be the Mahdi, or Promised Messiah. The two men exchanged letters, each disparaging the other. Ahmad challenged Dowie to a prayer duel, which Dowie accepted. Each asked God to punish the other.

In 1905, Dowie suffered a stroke during a visit to Mexico. Voliva took advantage of the circumstances to take over Zion. Dowie pursued litigation, but was finally forced to back down and accept an allowance from the church.

The Voliva years – the end

Although the congregation, now tired of Dowie’s authoritarianism, elected Voliva (pictured at right) as head of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in 1906, they merely traded in one tyrant for another. Voliva went so far as to dictate marriage partners to single townspeople. He also terminated housing leases at will.

Voliva expanded the local Zion Industries, diversifying from selling the Scottish lace of Dowie’s time to biscuits and chocolate. Zion was a company town and, characteristically, its working residents were underpaid.

Voliva believed the earth was flat. This was his understanding of astronomy:

The idea of a sun millions of miles in diameter and 91,000,000 miles away is silly. The sun is only 32 miles across and not more than 3,000 miles from the earth. It stands to reason it must be so. God made the sun to light the earth, and therefore must have placed it close to the task it was designed to do. What would you think of a man who built a house in Zion and put the lamp to light it in Kenosha, Wisconsin?[2]

As a result, Voliva issued additional bans: on globes (yes!), lipstick, high heels and oysters. He named the police force the Praetorian Guard and issued a 10 p.m. curfew.

Meanwhile, Dowie suffered more strokes. His family also left him. He suffered a final stroke in 1907 and died of paralysis. The self-proclaimed Mahdi, his opponent in the prayer duel, died a year later.

Afterward, Voliva began to live as lavishly as Dowie. He had his own radio station from which he preached against the evils of believing in a round earth and evolution. My parents remembered hearing some of his broadcasts as children and found them strange indeed.

The Great Depression forced Zion Industries into bankruptcy. The townspeople grew disgruntled with Voliva’s extravagance. In 1937, an angered employee of Zion Industries set the town’s huge church alight. Voliva filed for personal bankruptcy shortly afterward.

He ended up getting cancer, which proved to be fatal. In 1942, Voliva tearfully confessed to the congregation that he had misappropriated church funds for his personal use and that he had committed other serious sins.

Voliva died that same year, aged 72. He had predicted that he would live to be 120 thanks to his diet of Brazil nuts and buttermilk.

Dowie and Voliva’s church split after that. A small remnant of the congregation reformed, meeting in the local auditorium, but that was also set alight in 1959. An English family was living in a flat in the building. Fortunately, they were out when the fire started, otherwise, they would have perished as Zion’s fire crew lacked the equipment to reach the upper storeys of the structure in those days. Today, a new house of worship stands on the site: Christ Community Church.

Through Dowie and Voliva’s lives we see what authoritarianism is about: megalomania, total control of others, extravagant freedom for oneself, misappropriation of other people’s money and serious sin.

This, I suspect, lies in the lives of other prohibitionists, although we cannot make a blanket statement for all of them.

Recalling the late Nancy Reagan’s words, the next time someone asks for support in prohibition:

Just say no.