Disciples of Truth, diplomas of fraud: The tumultous tale of the ‘Anglo Saxon Sikhs’ of Oklahoma

The first mass conversion of Americans to Sikhism occurred in Oklahoma nearly 70 years ago. Decades later, it spawned a vast illegal enterprise involving fraudulent degrees. After two years of research through newspapers, magazines, and government records, its story is told here for the first time.

In 1955, a handful of spiritual seekers began to meet weekly at a small, single-family home within a quiet residential neighborhood in northern Tulsa, Oklahoma. Their aim was to study the world’s religions in chronological order, and their host and guide was a thin, middle-aged man in glasses named Homer Bradshaw.

After a few months, the study group became an official organisation and was incorporated by Bradshaw as “The Disciples of Truth” with a stated purpose of embracing and teaching “the underlying truth contained in all systems of religion, philosophy, and science”.

Towards the end of 1956, the Disciples of Truth had made their way to the final religion of their survey, Sikhism. They became convinced that they had found “the most complete revelation from God to our world” and were determined to meet actual Sikhs and learn more – although at that time, Sikhs numbered only a few thousand across the entire United States. They were mostly living in agricultural centres along the West Coast.

In what they saw as serendipity, the group soon learned that there were two Sikh students from India studying at the University of Oklahoma. The Disciples drove 120 km to meet them.

The students, JS Bakshi and KL Mehea, were likely astonished, given the lack of familiarity with Sikhism in the United States and the absence of any converts in the country. But they answered questions from the Disciples, gave them some literature, and told them to write to the Pacific Khalsa Diwan Society in Stockton, California.

Bradshaw wrote a lengthy letter to the Pacific Khalsa Diwan Society and asked them for literature in English and guidance so that the Disciples of Truth could “become good, full-fledged Sikhs”. He also introduced his small group of six persons to the Sikhs of Stockton and expressed hope to establish a gurdwara in Tulsa and serve as a missionary to “assist in bringing this wonderful Faith to many of our fellow Americans”.

In the spring of 1958, Bradshaw incorporated a new entity called Akal Sat Ke Sikhen or the Disciples of Eternal Truth. Newspapers in Oklahoma published stories about the state having its first “Sikh Church” and for a short while Bradshaw and his fellow converts conducted weekly services at his home that mostly consisted of lectures and reading the Ardas or Sikh prayer.

Amar Singh Khalsa, the editor in chief of Sardar magazine in Lucknow who had been corresponding with Bradshaw, arrived in Tulsa shortly after for a month-long visit to provide assistance and give lectures to the local community.

Bradshaw then took his missionary efforts on the road and visited Sikh communities in Texas, Arizona, California and then Canada. While his Sikh hosts generously received him, they often did not know what to do with the head of a self-described “Anglo-Saxon Sikh community” in Oklahoma.

Bradshaw’s account of the trip included unintentionally humorous events such as waiting for days for talks that never happened or lecturing in English to a handful of elders who only spoke Punjabi. But he did record a talk for a radio broadcast in California and spoke to Sikhs at a Gurdwara in British Columbia.

After his tour, Bradshaw wrote a series of articles for The Sikh Review in Calcutta, mostly on the possibilities of spreading Sikhism and establishing it as modern, global religion for the “Atomic Age of mankind”. His suggestions were both sensible and flattering.

Bradshaw hoped that Sikhs and their institutions would start devoting resources to catechising young Sikhs outside of India and proselytising the general public through motion pictures and literature in English. With a convert’s zeal, Bradshaw spoke glowingly of Sikhism and referred to Sikhs in inclusive terms such as “we” and “our people”.

Despite his enthusiasm, Bradshaw had come to Sikhism recently and only through materials in English. He knew little of Sikh history or culture, and did not know any Punjabi. Bradshaw’s ideas about Sikhism were largely his own and shaped by his personal preferences and spiritual worldview.

While the Sikh Review carefully edited Bradshaw’s articles and omitted what would have been seen as bizarre or offensive by their Sikh readership, those ideas were freely published by newspapers in Oklahoma and Canada.

Sikhism, according to Bradshaw, was the New Age culmination of “the progressive evolution of religion.” He told the Tulsa Tribune, “We accept Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, Jesus Christ, Mohammad and Guru Nanak as prophets of God of equal rank and dignity.”

Bradshaw was also adamant that beards and turbans had no place in Sikhism, and that Sikh communities in North America needed to hold their services in English, install pews in their gurdwaras and enter them wearing shoes. In Canada, he told the Times Colonist that the Sikhs of British Columbia were “smothering their religion through the worship of outward symbols”.

Remarkably, despite his lukewarm reception on the West Coast and his unorthodox ideas, soon after Bradshaw travelled to India where he was warmly received by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, an institution that manages gurdwaras in northern India and is the closest thing to a governing body for Sikhs around the world.

Bradshaw was given a copy of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, the scripture and living guru of Sikhs, for the newly established American Sikh community led by an American convert.

Whatever hopes Sikh authorities in India may have had for the Akal Sat Ke Sikhen were soon dashed. Not long after his return to the United States, the SGPC asked a man named Dr Harbans Lal, then a student at the University of Kansas, to go to Oklahoma and check in on the care being given to the Siri Guru Granth Sahib and the progress of Bradshaw and his fledgling congregation.

In an interview for Scroll, Lal recounted how he found Bradshaw and his mother as the only two remaining members. Unable to read the Gurmukhi script and unaware of the standard ritual care Sikhs show to the Guru, they stored their copy in a cabinet like an ordinary book. Perhaps even more offensive, Bradshaw smoked in the house where the Guru was stored. Without any protest, Bradshaw surrendered the copy of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib to Lal who became the new custodian.

Less than four years after the Disciples of Truth began to meet in the home of Homer Bradshaw, the first group of American converts to Sikhism were no more, but nearly two decades later, the Disciples of Truth would re-emerge for an astonishing second act.

The Doc and Crime by Degrees

By 1960, a man named James Caffey became the owner of the articles of incorporation of the Disciples of Truth. He was an unlikely person to head up a religious organisation. The year before he became its head, he was arrested and released on suspicion of narcotics possession and killed a schoolteacher in a traffic accident.

The year after he assumed control of the Disciples of Truth, Caffey was a suspect in a robbery and his home was searched by the police.

The officers described what they found in Caffey’s residence as “one of the largest and most weird assortments ever obtained here with a search warrant”. The cache included stolen goods, lock picking equipment, narcotics, hypodermic needles and syringes, and “lewd photographs”.

Officers also found suitcases filled with diplomas and gold seals, a package addressed to “James R. Caffey, MD” and a prescription pad with the same name and title. These last items connected Caffey to the Disciples of Truth.

The articles of incorporation for the Disciples of Truth allowed its owner to “confer academic honors, degrees, and certificates” on students. Since degree-granting institutions at this time were mostly unregulated, this allowed Caffey to operate what is commonly known as a diploma mill: a business that sells certifications and degrees through the mail while requiring little, if any, coursework, or abiding by educational standards.

Caffey was also able to use the Disciples of Truth to award himself credentials as a medical doctor, which he used to order and receive narcotics through the mail. (Ironically, his friends and family had called him “Doc” after he worked at a local hospital as a teenager.)

But his plans were quickly put on hold. After the police searched Caffey’s residence, they discovered a large quantity of cocaine he was storing in a safety deposit box at a local bank. “Doc” Caffey was then charged with possession of narcotics and given a 20-year prison sentence.

In 1973, Caffey was paroled after serving a little more than half of his sentence, and only a few years later, he was operating a massive and lucrative diploma mill.

Caffey acquired the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences, a long-dormant unaccredited school from Missouri that only existed on paper, but made the Disciples of Truth the centre of his operation.

Through it, he created and organised the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences and numerous other churches, seminaries, and universities. Caffey also erroneously believed that the Disciples of Truth provided him with a loophole to avoid paying taxes on his earnings since it was a religious organisation.

The operation was promoted through small, classified advertisements in national magazines that offered readers “degrees, diplomas, (and) certificates” that they could earn through studying at home, writing a thesis, or by earning credit from their previous work experience.

Those who wrote into the Disciples of Truth soon found that the requirements were negligible, and they could essentially buy degrees ranging from high school diplomas to doctorates, as well as ministerial credentials.

As the money poured in, Caffey was savvy enough to avoid criminal charges for years despite constant complaints. When the regents of the state of Oklahoma passed a resolution to stop one of his colleges in 1979, he moved and reestablished his operation in the neighbouring state of Missouri, one of a handful of states that had no laws against diploma mills.

He also used numerous semantic tricks to stay technically within the law: his schools were called “non-traditional” institutions, degrees were “awarded” not bought, and all monies sent to the Disciples of Truth were described as “examination fees” that only covered administrative expenses.

For those members of the public who doubted the legitimacy of his degrees, Caffey created a fake accrediting body to provide the appearance of validity to his schools.

Bringing criminal charges against Caffey proved to be impossible for investigators and prosecutors. Not only did he operate within a legal grey area, but it was difficult to find people who bought degrees through the Disciples of Truth who would come forward and testify against him, since these potential “victims” had their own ulterior motives in obtaining dubious credentials.

Two US government agencies, however, looked for indirect ways to shut down the Disciples of Truth. The Internal Revenue Service investigated Caffey for not paying taxes on the money he made selling diplomas, and the United States Postal Service tried to establish that he was using the mail to “obtain money through false representations”.

Their efforts dramatically culminated in January 1982. As the Internal Revenue Service was finalising a warrant to search Caffey’s home for evidence of tax evasion, postal officials ordered a stop the mail that came to the Disciples of Truth which effectively ended its ability to operate.

Five days later, Caffey’s home in Missouri was gutted in a massive fire. Investigators found gasoline and lighter fluid throughout the charred remains of the house and described the fire as a clear act of arson.

Caffey was so scared by these developments and the prospect of returning to jail that he immediately cut ties with his diploma mills and left them to his former salesman turned associate Anthony Geruntino. For the next few years, Geruntino used the Disciples of Truth to open new schools such as American Western University in Utah and Arizona.

Despite his efforts, Caffey acted too late to avoid criminal charges. While the Internal Revenue Service and Postal Service were closing in on the Disciples of Truth, a third US government agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had been gathering evidence on Caffey and others for years as part of a nationwide investigation of diploma mills codenamed “Operation Dipscam”.

In 1985, Operation Dipscam bore fruit. A federal grand jury indicted Caffey, Geruntino, and several others on charges of fraud and conspiracy stemming from the sale of thousands of degrees from a network of twenty-two bogus educational institutions.

Geruntino was arrested in Utah along with his secretary after making a presentation to a local town council about the benefits of his Southwestern University. Caffey was arrested the next morning in Missouri. Eventually they were both found guilty of fraud and each sentenced to five years in prison.

There was a wave of outrage in the wake of Operation Dipscam that was directed at both the operators of the diploma mills as well as their customers who were seen as knowingly buying fake degrees for their own advancement or vanity.

Through the diploma mills, thousands of unqualified people were placed in positions of power as nurses, medical technicians, schoolteachers, and accountants. Holders of bogus degrees were found in such high-reaching places as NASA, the Navy, the Pentagon, and even the White House.

‘The most ordained man in the world’

In all the publicity surrounding Caffey and his diploma mills, Homer Bradshaw was rarely mentioned, and when he was, it was only briefly as the original incorporator of the Disciples of Truth. Bradshaw made no public statement about the massive crime ring that developed from the small study group that began decades earlier at his home.

There is no evidence as to how and why the articles of incorporation for the Disciples of Truth originally changed hands. Homer Bradshaw most likely crossed paths with the inveterate criminal Caffey because of Bradshaw’s life as a closeted gay man.

Although Bradshaw described himself in a letter as having “no sense of guilt or shame” about who he was, he lived in an era when homosexuality was illegal and considered a mental illness in the United States. Gay social spaces were often controlled by members of organised crime who offered protection from police raids at a cost.

Gay men and women of that time were vulnerable to blackmail and extortion. This may have been the reason behind Bradshaw’s missionary tour of Sikh communities on the West Coast in 1958. A few months before he departed, two young men were charged with extorting Bradshaw after robbing him. Being out of state on business as a reverend kept Bradshaw from having to testify in court and explain why he picked up one of the young men in his car late at night outside a train station.

The various Sikhs in America and India who backed Bradshaw’s efforts likely took his claims of conversion seriously, but Sikhism was a just small part of Bradshaw’s prolific history of joining religions, collecting titles and creating organisations.

In the year before establishing the original Disciples of Truth, Bradshaw had incorporated another New Age organisation and the Oklahoma diocese of the Reformed Catholic Church, a schismatic group not aligned with Rome. During his time as a Sikh, Bradshaw gained a PhD from the Living Way Bible College in Tulsa.

Bradshaw’s religious experimentation continued at a similarly dizzying pace after he left the Sikh fold. During a 10-year period between 1964 to 1974, he founded seven more religious organisations and was a participant in several others. He lectured on Islam to the Moslem Students Association at a nearby university, officiated a Christian wedding and funeral, became a Buddhist priest, and established one society dedicated to the Shinto-derived new religion of Oomoto and another to the Bengali saint Haranath Banerjee.

As he did with Sikhs in California and India 14 years earlier, Bradshaw offered himself to various groups as a humble and devout convert who was eager to serve them and establish centers for them in the United States. One representative was so convinced by him that they wrote, “The yearning, firm faith, sincerity and enthusiasm of Rev. Homer… are unparalleled.”

Beyond enthusiasm, he was also adept at creating organisations and navigating bureaucracy. In a letter to the Haranath Society, Bradshaw made specific requests for letters and certificates that would allow him to incorporate a new organisation in the United States, accept donations, and order books at a wholesale rate. By the late-Seventies, he worked for a municipal government in Oklahoma in which he navigated local homeowners through complicated federal grant programs.

Bradshaw clearly took personal satisfaction from his many titles, publications and lectures. He referred to himself as “a recognised authority on the great world religions” and boasted of others referring to him as “the most ordained man in the world”. But this did not necessarily mean that Bradshaw was a dilettante with no real or fixed religious identity.

Like so many spiritual seekers in America, Bradshaw saw the exploration of one religion after another itself as a legitimate path, and one that granted him expertise and authority. He described his many conversions as both a quarter-century-long “search for Truth” and a single, consistent ministry that was “characterized by its freedom, universality, and love”.

The freedom and universality of Bradshaw’s ministry, however, bordered on anarchy. Bradshaw believed that others like him should be free to move from one faith to another as he did, and that they should be empowered to do so with whatever credentials they wanted.

Years before the articles of incorporation of the Disciples of Truth were handed over to Caffey, Bradshaw used them to grant divinity degrees and certificates of ordination to “a number of other sincere persons” that left them “free of any type of ecclesiastical obedience or doctrinal formula”.

There are only scant traces of the ordinations granted by Bradshaw. One was his friend Alvin Gibson who became a minister through the Disciples of Truth, ran a small spiritualist church in Tulsa, and conducted an interfaith marriage between a Baptist groom and a Jewish bride.

Years later, in something close to Bradshaw’s original intent, a temple for the syncretic Brazilian religion Umbanda used a degree from the Disciples of Truth to become credentialed and establish a place of worship in New York City.

It is far less likely that the massive and lucrative diploma mill operation that came out of Bradshaw's group of spiritual seekers-turned-Sikh converts was part of his original intent. In the hands of someone like Caffey, the unique power and lack of oversight given to religious organisations like the Disciples of Truth under American law was able to be exploited on a scale far beyond a handful of ministerial credentials.

Homer Bradshaw died in Tulsa in February of 1989 at the age of 62, and James Caffey died in his home in Springfield, Missouri, 12 years later at the age of 69.

Traces of the Disciples of Truth have remained in the decades since their deaths in the resumes of political candidates, the biographies of businessmen, and numerous obituaries around the country that have touted degrees from American Western University and the Northwestern College of Allied Sciences.

The first Sikh gurdwara in Tulsa was recently established by the local Punjabi Sikh community. Like so many other gurdwaras in the United States, it was purchased through fundraising and renovated with volunteer labour. It stands 20 km away from the small home in northern Tulsa where Homer Bradshaw met with several others nearly 70 years ago and created the first group of American Sikh converts.

Philip Deslippe is a doctoral candidate in the department of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is a writer and researcher on Asian, metaphysical, and marginal religious traditions in modern America.