The Western Hemisphere University of the Bible was a doctorate-granting religious institution based in Little Rock, Arkansas. It held no classes and did all its business by mail. Framed doctorates of divinity were sent to applicants for $80.[1] The school advertised in the classifieds section of Popular Mechanics. Its motto was "Make Religion Live!"[2]
The school was previously the Little Rock School of Embalming when the 68 year old widow of the owner, Mary Alice Shoup, hired 40 year old Lionel J.D. Jones as president after he answered a job ad in a funeral-home trade journal. At that time, the school was losing $8,000 a year due to the high overhead costs of the embalming field. After the two later married, Jones—a former dental student with white supremacist ideas about race, religion, and teeth—sold the school's real estate and rechartered it as a divinity school.[1]
Alumni[]
- Vox Humana
- Lionel J.D. Jones