Christian Spiritualist Quarterly, The.
Magazine for Christian Spirit Service Through Healing (Physical. Mental, Material & Spiritual) Lectures & Self Help.
Your Key to Happingess, Health, Prosperity, Peace Through Knowledge of Life Eternal
1935--1943? Quarterly
Kansas City, MO.
Editor: Rev. Nettie Garmer Barker.
Publisher: Church of Jesus Christ Our Redeemer.
1/1, 1935.
26 pp., 75 cents-$1.00 a year.

This peripheral journal was an anachronism in the 1930s. Barker (1882-1953) was, in addition to her role in spiritualism, a novelist and the author of Kansas Women in Literature (a slim volume given free with a year's subscription to the journal), and was an active society matron, founding a Christian Spiritualist Friendship Club (75 cents of the $1.00 dues going to subscribe to the journal), a Christian Spiritualist Garden Club ("the Spirit Forces love flowers and their fragrance"), and the Christian Spiritualist Universal Stamp [Collecting] Club. She was the pastor and bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ Redeemer on Benton Boulevard in Kansas City, of which this journal was the organ. The church was a "Healing Sanctuary" in which Barker delivered clairaudient sermons and the likes of Professor Sidney Weltmer, Will Rogers, Thomas Edison and, most impressively, Marie Dressler, spoke through spirit trumpets, with their communications then printed in the journal. She was a developing medium under the tutelage of Edison, and reported that he was "now working on an invention whereby mediums may acquire the necessary chemicalization and vibration for phenomena in a much shorter time than has ever before been possible. He states I am to be the first developing medium to be given this honor, and that my students may demonstrate to the world the speed with which Spirit can develop mediumship. I pray God I may prove a perfect instrument for his purpose." Nothing further is reported about this invention, unfortunately, although Barker advertised "Correspondence Developing Course (leading to ordination). 50c per lesson. Certificate issued at close of each 24 lessons)." The journal carried contributions by "Rose, The Sunlight," "Wife of Dr. Carson records her experiences in the Celestial World." This was probably the deceased widow of C.H. Carson, who had earlier run a Temple of Health in Kansas City and published Psychic World. This journal also carried regular filler on palmistry (by Larry George), graphology (Emilia Garmer), numerology, and astrology (by Koren Mahrae, Ethical Hindu Astrologer, who also wrote on "Turf Profits," her own method of "answering the horse racing question."). Margaret McCallum, "The Highland Seeress, Greenock, Scotland" also wrote for the journal and advertised her services (send birth date, lock of hair and one or two dollar bills). Small book reviews appeared in the journal of works by F. Homer Curtiss, Enoch Penn, et al., and it also carried a curious advertisement for Walter Siegmeister ("Raymond W. Bernard"), which may indicate a more serious side to Barker's work:

"The Secret Rejuvenation. The increase of physical and mental vitality through New Endocrine Discovery of Prof. Brown-Sequard, described by Walter Siegmeister, N. Main St., Spring Valley, N.Y. Price 30 c. Send 3c stamp for copy of 'Regeneration.'"

Advertised in Astrological Bulletina, January-March 1936, and Psychic Observer, August 25, 1943. LOC.

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