Saints & Sinners

...Shortly thereafter, his affair with another woman was revealed...

...The downfall of Railey—a prominent liberal pastor who was an outspoken critic of racism in Dallas and who many assumed would become a bishop—is presented as a sort of morality play...

...Wright is a staff writer for the New Yorker, a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone and Texas Monthly (where shorter versions of these profiles first appeared), and a self-described ex-Methodist...

...Throughout the book Wright admits that he is drawn to the bizarre and to extremes: belief and unbelief, salvation and damnation, good and evil, saints and sinners...

...The essays on Madalyn O'Hair, as an archetype of doubt, and on Anton LeVey, as an archetype of evil, are disturbing...

...There is no small amount of author ego evident in this book...

...In many ways, it is a personal book—some readers may find it too personal...

...In the chapter on LeVey, Wright raises important questions regarding the rising phenomenon of satanic cults and their uncertain link with child abuse...

...An angry man and a militant Catholic, George was a tough, demanding father to his seven children...

...Journalists have never known exactly what to do with religion," he admits, adding that members of his profession tend "to look upon religion as a marketplace of the weird and the absurd...

...Wright admires their moral courage in "exploring] the dark, uncertain territories of the human spirit...

...Catherine Walsh Six controversial religious leaders are profiled in this often fascinating book: Walker Railey, Jimmy Swaggart, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Anton LeVey, Will Campbell, and Matthew Fox...

...He argues that the 1964 Supreme Court decision banning public school prayer—a decision that will be forever associated with O' Hair— was part of a secularization of society that was both intellectually liberating and socially ruinous...

...they tried to become as hallowed and sanctified as the masks they wore," the author writes in the preface...

...When George lay dying of a brain tumor in 1987, his son went to visit him in the hospital: "Til bet you wish I'd been an ordinary parish priest, don't you?' Matt asked...

...They tried to purge what they called demons inside them...

...His favorite axiom is: "We're all bastards, but God loves us anyway...

...He also believes they possess "a certain purity that one might otherwise ascribe to religious ascetics...

...Nine days after his wife was assaulted, Railey tried to commit suicide...

...I found the chapters on O'Hair and LeVey less interesting...

...So, too, is the more well-known downfall of Jimmy Swaggart...

...Instead, their demons, their repressed needs, their disowned selves, whatever one might call them, took control...

...Fox's troubled relationship with his father is explored in moving detail in the essay...

...Almost as riveting are the essays on Railey and Jimmy Swaggart...

...Deciding around midlife that his unexamined agnosticism was a cop out, he went on a personal and professional quest: "I thought that by writing about people with various kinds of beliefs, I might find something worth believing, some anchor to secure the spiritual restlessness that was my constant shadow...

...Easter weekend at Findhorn, a New Age community, is in turns hilarious and moving...

...He wanted to find out whether "any faith can survive such scrutiny," whether and what he can believe...

...George Fox had been raised and educated by Augustinian priests, who rescued him as a child from Chicago's slums and a chaotic, abusive family...

...Lawrence Wright's interest in these figures, he notes in the preface, stems both from journalistic curiosity and his own spiritual search...

...Perhaps only a journalist, who lives so much of his life vicariously, would think this way...

...In Wright's final essay, we participate with Matthew Fox in a sweat lodge ceremony on Scotland's remote northern shore...

...But when the liberal, Yale-educated, Southern Baptist preacher first reached out to Klan members in the late '60s, he was bitterly criticized and misunderstood...

...Well, Dad,' Matt said tearfully, 'I couldn't have been the kind of priest I am without the courage you taught me.'" This essay provides a fascinating look at both Fox and Wright, at the converging quests of a confused, creation-spirituality-centered priest and a confused, agnostic journalist...

...Mother Teresa turned down Wright's request to write about her...

...Tim, who had had childhood polio and was physically frail, now had his father's respect—even reverence...

...He was thrilled, however, when young Tim entered the Dominicans and became Father Matthew...

...Coming to a place that is "so far out," explains Fox toward the end of the weekend, helped him to reaffirm his own Christianity—a point made all the more poignant and ironic in light of his recent dismissal from the Dominicans...

...Yes, I do,' he said earnestly, 'yes, I do.' He still had a lot of power, even at the end...

...The portraits of Will Campbell, who has been called a white Martin Luther King, Jr., by some, and of Matthew Fox, recently dismissed from the Dominican Order, are worth the price of the book...

...It is no accident that Wright chose to focus on a minister accused of trying to murder his wife, a television evangelist brought down by a scandal involving prostitutes, one of America's best-known atheists, the founder of the Church of Satan, a Southern Baptist preacher whose ministry included the Ku Klux Klan, and a New Age Catholic priest...

...Those who have achieved fame and notoriety because of a religious zeal, who are cloaked in a "mask" or public persona of a faith, fascinate him: "...[P]owering this quest was my need to strip away masks and find the hidden truth," he writes...

...Many citizens of Dallas were outraged when the Reverend Walker L. Railey of the First United Methodist Church was acquitted of attempted murder...

...35...

...From the opening profile of Walker Railey, the Methodist minister of Wright's childhood church in Dallas who was acquitted last spring of trying to strangle his wife, the reader is plunged into the author's opinions, reactions, and ruminations...

...His father squeezed his hand very hard...

...Wright brings out Campbell's anti-institutionalism, and his human warts and faults in an essay that bears eloquent testimony to the power of love and Christian belief...

...Will Campbell, a counselor to freedom riders and demonstrators at lunch counter sit-ins, became a legend in the civil rights movement...

...But Matt Fox did not turn out to be the kind of priest his father had expected...

...One woman in the sweat lodge ceremony prays to the spirit that lives in her pansies...

...He went on to become a football legend at Villanova University (where he was appointed to the same ail-American team as Vince Lombardi), and later earned his living coaching college football...

...His approach, while sometimes too self-conscious and a bit contrived, seems honest and it engaged me as a reader—even as I questioned his interpretations...

...But Wright is a compelling writer...

...Indeed, the book is often as much about Wright and his spiritual quest as it is about his subjects...

...Many believe that he is responsible for the persistent vegetative state his wife Peggy has been in since 1987...