Saturday Memory

January 4, 2024

I was eight. It was the summer of 1947. It was Sunday. My parents had dropped me off at the Methodist Church for my weekly religious education. The pastor was lecturing us on The Book of Revelation. Being a little scientist at the time, having microscopes, chemistry sets, telescopes, and a large bug collection, I was not so interested in the fire and brimstone of Revelation (about which I had already read) as I was in various questions related to evolution. When the pastor called on me after I raised my hand, I said, “I don’t have any questions on Revelation, but could you talk about evolution?” As I remember it, he looked at me for a long time and then said, “No, I will not talk about evolution, but I will talk to your parents.”

When my parents picked me up, he called them into his office while I waited outside. When they emerged, I asked what happened. They told me the pastor did not want me to attend Sunday school anymore.

That was my last experience of church.

Yet, I minored in religious studies in college and took several classes with the distinguished professor and Methosit pastor John Wesley Robb at USC, the best teacher I ever had. I chose him as the pastor to marry my wife and me. Later, The Book of Revelation became a deep object of study and influence on me. My fictional “lost gospel” of John the Baptist (the actual author of The Book of Revelation) plays a large part in my novel, Dreams: The Final Heresy.

For whatever reason, I have often felt a kind of gratitude to that pastor in my childhood.