A tale of faith and betrayal

Carl Leonard Nelson was a believer in 1927. As he stood inside the hall located at 7 Winter St. in Providence, the 33-year-old had nothing but faith in the Church of Jesus Inc. and its leaders, Fred and Mable Dodge.

Fred Eugene Dodge had married Mabel Clare Fultz in 1903. They settled in Grafton, New Hampshire, where Fred was employed as a butter maker in a creamery. They then moved on to Androscoggin, Maine, where Fred managed a creamery before opening his own general store.

By the 1920s, they had come to Providence and were residing with their two daughters, Evelyn and Catherine, on Elmdale Street. Fred wasn’t making butter anymore. He was now regarded as a minister and Mabel as a messenger of God.

Like Carl, the others who worshipped at the hall held Mabel on a great pedestal. She was a self-proclaimed prophet and the leading force of the church. They believed that God transmitted messages through her and, because they were believers, occasionally routed messages through them as well.

In 1928, Carl married the Dodge’s 17-year-old daughter, Evelyn. Following the marriage, Mabel informed Carl that she had received a message directing that they all should live together under one roof. There was a small house for sale at 196 Crescent Ave. in Cranston and, according to Mabel, God had told her to buy it.

However, there was a problem. Mabel and Fred didn’t have enough money for the purchase. Believing the title would be put in all of their names if he chipped in, Carl handed over some money. His name did not, in fact, go on the title, and the following year, Mabel informed him that God wanted a bigger house. She explained that messages she had been receiving concerned the church members being able to live together as well as worship together.

Mabel approached aged church member and minister Amos Bray. “Brother Bray, God has called me to build this house,” she told him.

Amos went and withdrew his savings, spending it on three lots of land beside the little house. When Amos urged Carl to pay for the construction of the house, he refused. This made Mabel, and allegedly God, very upset. Her messages were now telling her that Carl was damned, that he was no good and that there was no hope for him. She informed him that he would burn in hell unless he stripped himself of worldly goods.

The dire warnings for Carl came constantly as Mabel threw herself on the floor howling like an animal, crying angrily and simulating the act of vomiting. During church sermons, she would pull Carl to the front of the church by his coat collar and force him to place his head beneath the piano.

Carl’s humiliation turned to fear. Strangely, he had begun feeling sick. He approached Mabel and asked what he might do to appease God. She again told him that he must strip himself of worldly things. In desperation for his life and soul, Carl cashed in all of his stocks and investments as well as the life insurance on himself, his wife and their children. To the Dodges, he handed almost $10,000. The three-story, 12,000-square-foot house was built at 222 Crescent St. and the congregation moved in.

Amos and his wife Idella, however, were removed to the little house as it had become necessary for them to go on public relief now that their money was gone.

In 1947 Mabel announced that she was again getting messages from God informing her that Carl was a liar and a thief. The rest of the congregation was instructed not to speak to him, and Evelyn was encouraged to seek a divorce. At 2 o’clock in the morning on June 9 of that year, Mabel led the congregation in forcing Carl out of the big house.

Certain now that the religion of Mabel Dodge had been a fraud, Carl sued her for restitution.

The Dodges, however, continued on their otherworldly path. In 1954, Fred still considered himself a minister and, by 1956, was calling himself a Bishop. He died in Cranston in 1959, two years after Mabel. Carl passed away in 1986.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.