Brother C.
Thomas Patten had little contact with religion as a youngster in
Tennessee. “My Daddy was baptized a Baptist in a mountain stream,” he
explains, “but a crawfish bit him on his big toe and he never went
back.” Tom got to be a carouser, “drank like a fish,” even got himself
a suspended two-year prison sentence for driving a stolen car across a
state line. But he saw the light after he met Evangelist Bebe Harrison,
“the only woman I ever saw that I couldn't get fresh with.”Tom and Bebe decided to do the Lord's work together. They got married in
1935, set to spreading the Gospel in 38 states, then settled down in
Oakland seven years ago. Under the chilly scrutiny of the Oakland
Council of Churches, they started holding revivals and set up three
schools—the Academy of Christian Education, Patten College and Patten
Seminary. Students joined up at the rate of 300 a year, paying $20 a
month tuition, slipping on bright school sweaters with big block Ps,
and learning the school yells. Sample, adopted from the old “Give 'em
the ax”: “Give 'em the Word, the Word, the Word.” Some paid $5 for the
academy's first and only yearbook, The Portal, a tome which explained
Brother Tom's role in the world: “After scanning the honor roll of the
obedient, the eyes of God rested on the name of C. Thomas Patten . . .
Thus was born God's businessman of the hour . . . Business adventures
for God are still taking form and this man of God is now trudging ahead
to a goal of enormous accomplishments.”Pastor in Pistachio. Business, by earthly standards, was good indeed.
Tom worked up a wardrobe of 46 expensive suits , a flock of screaming sport shirts and
cowboy jackets, 200 pairs of cowboy boots, some worth $200. “I like to
keep my feet covered,” explained Brother Tom.Bebe's taste leaned toward less gaudy satin dresses and silver foxes.
Between them the Pattens shared four Cadillacs, two Packards, a
Lincoln, a Chrysler, an Oldsmobile and a $6,000 cabin cruiser.Such displays of wealth were enough to breed doubt in some of the
faithful. A few followers went to the district attorney. Last week Tom
Patten, a strapping, 218-lb. six-footer with a toothy grin and a fat
face, was on trial in Alameda County Courthouse charged with mulcting
some of his flock of $20,000. One of the shaken believers, an
unemployed food caterer named George Lewis, told the jury how he had
parted with more than $10,000. “I'd go to a Patten meeting with my full
pay and come out with a couple of dollars. I just
couldn't seem to keep from giving it.” Witness Lewis complained that
Brother Tom said the money was going to be used for noble purposes—a
mammoth choir loft to be raised and lowered by push button, a
glass-enclosed baptistery similarly operated, a big electric Escalator
running from nave to altar. But none of these things materialized. Mrs.
Freeda Borchardt, once the Pattens' cleaning woman, explained forlornly
that she and her husband had coughed up $2,800 after Brother Tom
referred to her during a church service as “the meanest woman in
Oakland.”
