1969 The Cosmic Connectivity between Sandy Archer and Miss Kim Revealed

It took me a very long time to determine what Dr. Hopkins meant in answer to my casual probe about how he approved Sandy Archer (Mime Troupe co-founder) as a resident of the large cottage, as he had replied, "Miss Kim." And he went on to elaborate as completely as he could, by saying that "Miss Kim came from the Orient". So, to make a long metaphysical story short, Dr. Hopkins selected Sandy Archer as a resident of the large cottage because of Miss Kim. (Because of the name "Archer." "Dr. Hopkins knew the Archers, who were ministers in the Universal Church of the Master... .") Asking the simplest question of Dr. Hopkins was a challenge to me, as well. When I was interested in learning about the estate and the history of the large cottage, and by extension its residents (both past and future), I made a simple first query: "How was it Sandy rented the cottage?" He shook his head, he didn't know. I persisted, "Well, where did Sandy come from?" (meaning how did she end up renting the cottage) He didn't know. I had to formulate a different question to prompt what I hoped would be the correct answer, "How was it Sandy found her way here?" (to which he then replied "Miss Kim").

Understanding Volume 6 Number 9
September 1961
VISTA unit #4: John W. Hopkins of Williams College lectured to this unit during July, on "The Music of the Spheres."

(all issues of Understanding newsletters scanned and posted by Sean at Danielfry.com)

Dr. John W. Hopkins: Mentioned in lofty academic publications of sociological and historic natures

Dr. John W. Hopkins: Mentioned in lofty academic publications of sociological and historic natures

"Occult milieu" was a concept used to describe the atmosphere of Williams College by John Lofland, a sociologist who in 1966 published an account of a "cult", in his book titled "The Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith" (Prentice Hall, 1966). In that treatise, Lofland partly traced the early history of the Unification Church in the Bay Area and his path of inquiry led directly to the grounds of Williams College and Dr. John W. Hopkins himself c. 1961.

By way of explanation, the Unification Church was nearly unknown to any but their followers at the time of Lofland's publication, and only beginning in the early '70s with their growing financial success and swelling membership did the organization gain wider public notoriety as Rev. Moon's church, the followers being popularly designated as Moonies. The concept of "Doomsday Cult" was popularized by Lofland, who had familiarity with the East Bay geography as a teaching assistant and pre-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley in the early '60s. (Lofland eventually was recalled to teaching and served as Professor Emeritus at UC Davis).

Lofland chose to veil "Williams College" by the pseudonym "Amhurst College" in his work for reasons of his own. Although any scholar familiar with the history of Amherst College (in Massachusetts) would catch on to the association as Amherst College was founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College (also in Massachusetts), and would also be aware that those colleges though established on similar tenets since that cleavage separated further and developed rivalries one with the other. Additionally, Lofland disguised Cora Williams as "Cora Amhurst". Educated people of the Bay Area of the time familiar with the local lore of the John Hopkins Spring Estate would have easily seen through this slight literary fabrication. Through his use of pseudonym, I assume that Lofland actively chose to separate Williams College, Berkeley, from the Unification Church.

For others who have followed since, Lofland's "Amhurst College" pseudonym has been revealed by Michael L. Mickler in "A History Of The Unification Church In America, 1959–74 - Emergence of a National Movement" (Publisher HSA-UWC). In this work, Mickler utilizes Lofland's early phrase "Occult Milieu"* as an actual sub-heading title. I should also explain as Moon's church has since gone through another name change that HSA-UWC was the original name for what became known as the Unification Church, the acronymn means The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.

This essentially is a side note to the activities of Williams College and Dr. John Hopkins, but as academic histories each of these scholarly works provide additional details now nearly lost to time.


* ("Although considerable research has been conducted on how people are recruited into cults, little or nothing is known about how they enter the occult milieu. However, persons may take up occult interests as a form of membership in a social network where such interests prevail. If so, then the occult can be characterized as a true subculture -- a distinctive set of cultural elements that flourish as the property of a distinctive social group. Or occult interests may reflect a much more superficial phenomenon. Participation in such interests could be more like being a member of a theater audience -- a transitory and relatively private amusement that is not supported by significant social relations. If the former is the case,then entry into the occult milieu is quite plausibly interpreted as a significant symptom of potential recruitment into a deviant religious group. If the latter, then consumption of occult teachings may be little more than a minor exercise in idiosyncratuc taste having little meaning for future religious actions." ("The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation", by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, University of California Press, 1986, p. 322)

From "The World Savers" to "Doomsday Cult"

Friends and Foes

A Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, John Lofland met Doris Walder at a UFO convention and after several preliminary contacts, decided to do his doctoral dissertation on the group. Having obtained permission from Miss Kim to move in, Lofland played a decisive, if puzzling and finally troublesome role in the community's development. As a participant observer from March, 1962, until January, 1963, when he was asked to leave, Lofland represented the movement's first encounter with a 'disinterested' academic investigator. The misunderstandings that accrued in this encounter were heated and difficult. Miss Kim asserted,

I rather naively thought that he would write a neutral history of our movement. But I saw more and more that he was not genuine and that his view was distorted. His sarcasm became more and more open and his derogatory conception of our work became more obvious. I told him finally, to move out and not come to our meetings. 46

(Quoted from A History Of The Unification Church In America,
1959-74 - Emergence of a National Movement, by Michael L Mickler, Chapter Two
To The Bay Area: 1960-63, Friends and Foes)

All I know of Lofland's tone is shown through his writings on Williams College and Dr. John Hopkins in the "Doomsday Cult":

Pg. 69 Late in February the group learned of Amhurst College, which had a "School of Metaphysical Inquiry."

page 70 Amhurst College was a local gathering place of the occult milieu. A few of the titles of lectures there will illustrate the milieu's concerns: Do You Have An Astral Body? ("the art of projection, viz., meditation, adoration and illumination"); Communication with Extraterrestrial Worlds and Intelligences

pg 71 (He [Hopkins] also got half of the one dollar per person "free will offering.") The school's mimeographed monthly flyer of March, 1961, carried the following announcement, embedded among topics such as those given above, but twice as long as any other.

(The 6-person Unification group was hard pressed financially in those early times, having newly migrated to a "sometimes hostile city environment". Additionally, they had to sustain themselves in their 7-room commune on Cole Street by some of the women taking on jobs as waitresses, while yet another member was helped into a better-paying job as a postman. Therefore, I sense some disapproval behind Lofland's detail about Dr. Hopkins retaining half of the "free will offering".

It is indeed interesting to note that Lofland's 588-page dissertation, submitted to and approved by the University of California at Berkeley's department of sociology in June, 1964, was originally entitled "The World Savers: A Field Study of Cult Processes". When an abbreviated version of the thesis was later published in book form in 1966, the title was changed to "Doomsday Cult".)