Starting in January of this year, the blog has featured all the US presidents of the Brotherhood of Light era 1918-1932 (Wilson, Coolidge, Hoover) except Warren G. Harding about whom there is much less commentary in the Lessons. Subsequent presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Nixon have also been examined in light of later Church of Light publications. Upton Sinclair was profiled last year in terms of his natal chart, but he is also discussed by the lessons in other ways.
Mary Craig Sinclair recalls that Upton’s 1927 novel Oil!, set in southern California, has one character loosely based on a real incident in Carmel the previous year. The Teapot Dome scandal is the historic background for the oil industry depicted in the book, and defines the Harding presidency. (The 2007 Academy award-winning film There Will Be Blood was loosely based on Oil!) She quotes a letter from Upton on the California religious subplot composed at the time he started writing it:
“And Paul has an older brother named Eli, who becomes a prophet, a hellfire-and-brimstone evangelist—he’s going to be a male Aimee Semple McPherson. He reaps a fortune and builds a temple in Los Angeles, and then runs away with a woman, and comes back with a wonderful tale of having been kidnapped and sets the whole town arguing about whether he really did or didn’t.”(p303, Southern Belle)