He was taller than I’d guessed from his pictures on the Internet, and he had an athlete’s spring to his step. Tan and trim. He looked to be late thirties or early forties, but I remembered he was forty-nine now. God was taking good care of his pastor. God and our healthy Southern California lifestyle. Reggie wore crisp new jeans, a long-sleeved open-collared white shirt, and white athletic shoes. His messy blond hair gave him a boyish look.
I looked around at the packed room. Every pew full and enough people standing to drive a fire captain crazy. The mezzanine was filled to its railing.
Today’s sermon was “Your Road to Damascus.”
Atlas started off with an emotional call for God to bless our fighting men and women overseas, and for the congregation to help lift their spirits through the Onward Soldiers Fund, which was sending thousands of dollars’ worth of material every month to U.S. military deployed throughout the world. Exactly $55,375 so far, said Atlas, which averaged out to over four thousand dollars raised right here by this congregation every month since the Cathedral by the Sea had opened last year. The funds were matched by the Western Evangelical Alliance, doubling their value. The church had sent hundreds of phones, tablets, and sunglasses, mountains of healthy snack foods, crates of sunscreen, Quick Cooler bandanas, and compact “military-grade” Holy Bibles to servicemen and — women in more than a dozen countries. He said that God in his wisdom had made American fighting men and women the best in the world. And that America, as God’s chosen country, was obligated to defend this beautiful world from the godless, the evil, and the forces of Satan. In the end, God’s will be done. As an ex-Marine, I felt proud to be called the best. Along with hundreds of millions of other young people throughout history who had heard a similar message and bought it.
Following his Onward Soldiers Fund pitch, Pastor Reggie took his sermon from the fields of battle to the personal battles faced by Christians. He said that the battle with outer enemies — such as those Satan-inspired terrorists in the Middle East — and our inner enemies — such as greed, selfishness, lust for money, and lust for the flesh — are all part of the same battle. He said that, like Paul, we each will face a reckoning on our various roads to Damascus.
Atlas had a rich tenor and his words came to life without effort. His pacing was subtle but dramatic, and he had a nice gift for highs and lows, starts and stops. Occasionally he allowed a Georgia accent that suggested credence and civility. And something of the backwoods, too, self-humored but canny. He used his hands less than most evangelicals I’d seen, keeping them close in to his body and moving them like a boxer. I’ve heard evangelicals called “charismatic,” and this was a good description of Reggie Atlas. His delivery was powerful, articulate, and somehow humane. He seemed to feel the inner battles of which he spoke. He was admonishing his lambs but empathizing with them, too.
So when Pastor Atlas condemned the sins of “adultery and homosexuality,” he expressed what appeared to be genuine sympathy for adulterers and homosexuals. And when he talked about the need for “strong borders and a great wall of faith” between America and her “fine but less obedient neighbors,” he sounded truly sorry that some people could not be allowed to stay in “God’s chosen land.” When he said that abortion was an abomination to the Lord and should be punishable as a crime against all women and men, and that he would “cast the first stone with eyes gushing tears,” I believed him, though I wasn’t sure whom he wanted to tearfully stone, the abortionist or the pregnant woman, or both.
Violet whispered into my ear: “I don’t agree with him on some things, but he makes me want to believe!”
I glanced over at Frank, staring at Atlas with mute, beak-nosed stoicism.
I looked back up to the pastor. Violet whispered something to Frank. I wondered why she was always talking, running, or looking behind her. Never at rest. Was she afraid something bad would happen if she was still? If so, what?
Mom and Dad made us kids go to church until we were twelve, respectively. After that, up to us. We were baptized. I always liked the sermons. I daydreamed through them, sometimes, of surfing and girls and baseball. But I wasn’t bored by the sermons. I was inspired.
The final part of Atlas’s sermon claimed that public and private wars could be won with the same two things: faith and action. Faith required prayer, and action required courage.
He told a story of his early years preaching in rural Georgia, how after a day of carrying the word to the poor, he’d park his VW van down by a creek or in a campground or far out in a parking lot, and he’d set his cooler on a table if there was one, or on the ground, and he’d take the loaf of bread, then part the layer of ice cubes he’d buy every third night — only cost a quarter back then — and dig out the baloney and cheese and the condiments. Baloney and mustard made the miracle, he said. And it took lots of miracles, because he might take up two, even three collections on a good day, but he’d still barely have enough gas money to get to the next town and do it all again.
One night in a park he was mugged by three young black men, no more than boys, really, but plenty big and rough. This was back in the days when the townspeople still wore their hair big, with the combs in them. Reggie was eighteen, less than six months on the road as an evangelical. It had rained earlier and there were ticks falling off the trees. After the muggers had beaten him down and rifled through his van and taken what they wanted and thrown the last of his food on the ground, Reggie had lain there in the cold dirt with the ticks landing all around him, and steadfastly refused to pray. Refused to ask for help. Refused to thank the Lord for sparing his life. For sparing his eyes and his hands and his vehicle or anything else, because Reggie was angry at the Lord for betraying His servant into the hands of the wicked. The longer he lay there, the angrier he got.
By the time Reggie had washed himself off in a park bathroom and gotten the ticks off him, collected what food wasn’t ruined, then put his meager possessions back in order and climbed into the driver’s seat, he had one hundred percent retired as a preacher. He was done. It was over. He had failed his Lord and his mama and the old man and himself.
But the engine of his van wouldn’t turn over, and the more he cranked the starter the weaker the battery got, until there was barely enough charge left to power the radio. He listened to it — to a country preacher he had always admired and who had gotten his own show — until his battery was completely dead. “Like my spirit,” said Reggie.
It was late by then, and he scrunched down in the uncomfortable van seat and let his head roll against the window. It was early spring and the glass was cold. He had almost fallen asleep when he saw an old man walking across the park toward him. It looked as if he had emerged from behind a young magnolia, but Reggie wondered how the man could have hidden himself behind the slender, still leafing tree.
The man carried a black duffel and it looked heavy. He set it on the picnic table and came to the window. Reggie looked at his face through the dew-dripping glass. An older guy, long white hair brushed back. Blue eyes in a haunted face. Reggie tried to roll down the window, but they were electric and he had no power. He swung the door open and stepped out.
“I heard you preach today,” said the man. “In the holler down to the orchard.”
“Then you heard my last preaching,” said Reggie.
“Looks like they got the better of you.”
“Three on one. I’m tough, but I ain’t that tough.”
“What did they take?”
“If it was good they took it.”
“Here.”
The old man tugged lightly on the sleeve of Reggie’s coat and led him to the picnic table. There, he unzipped the big black duffel and began pulling things out. Reggie said the man didn’t rummage around inside, he just pulled certain things out and left others, as if he knew exactly what he needed and where it was. Reggie watched the collection pile up on the table: baloney — same brand as his — and bread and a few cans of pork and beans and a box of crackers, a can of condensed milk. Then a Falcons sweatshirt that didn’t even look that dirty, and a bottle of body-and-hair wash, and a bath towel, white and folded and once belonging to the Holiday Inn. The old man rested one foot on the picnic bench and from inside a sock he pulled some money, folded and dented in the shape of his ankle. He set two fives on top of the towel. Then put the soap on top so they wouldn’t blow away.