American Saints

By Paul Ziehe

It is the United States of the early 21st Century, but it seems to have taken a great leap backward into the 19th. Splashy gospel shows are its most vibrant national industry, the government shapes foreign and domestic policy around Biblical prophesy, science is widely mistrusted—and we are again warned that the End Times are imminent. There is a rising tension between this “Christian Nation” and that “other America”, still wantonly materialist and sexually untamed. Rolf Devron, the high-profile publisher of a slick girlie magazine, is targeted for prosecution by a consortium of powerful religious groups. Superstar evangelist Maureen Aspenwald, taking a more Christ-like approach, assigns herself the mission of converting him. Frayed and vulnerable, as his trial seems to be moving toward a conviction, Devron finds himself yielding to the force of her personality—and perhaps to her message. He may even be falling in love with her. Author and freethinker Neville Titus becomes the front-man in an effort to hold the line against this theocratic movement. He views this clash of pornographer and pentecostals essentially as a national freak show, yet one in which something larger is at stake. He covers the trial in a series of H. L. Mencken-like dispatches. Finally, at one of Maureen’s nationally televised “Events”, Rolf comes out for Jesus. There is some doubt, in certain quarters, about the genuineness of this conversion. Where, asks Titus, is God Himself in all this sound and fury? He publicly, and half-jokingly, challenges Maureen to a modified re-enactment of the epic Biblical Contest on Mt. Carmel (First Kings, 18). It is time, he suggests, for God to stop hiding behind scriptures and priests, and make a personal appearance, as He did so routinely in the days of the law and the prophets. To the alarm of most of the evangelical community, Maureen embraces the challenge. Against all expectations, including Titus's, the Contest goes forward—and becomes an American spectacle, drawing a multitude of curiosity-seekers, rowdies, Jesus-cult outlaw bikers, hucksters, Satanists, true believers, un-believers. The faith of a nation, and the very existence of God, looks to be on the line. Will God step up to that line?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Ziehe
• Release date: Feb 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310939914

Paul Ziehe

Paul Ziehe is a freethinker wonk who ponders intensely about issues like the ones contained in this work. Product of very conservative and pious parentage, he is on old Longhorn, ex-marine, and veteran of many and varied occupations. Currently semi-retired, he lives in the South San Fransisco Bay Area. This book is obviously a cry for help and your prayers are solicited.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

AN EXAMINED LIFE

It seemed a disordered homecoming, from so holy a quest.

An evening flight, a shuttle ride through the dreariness of this balmy October—cold, driving rain would have been more suitable to a prodigal’s return. Home past midnight, where he passed a dull vigil among the tables and chairs of a former life, and a brief night that offered neither enlightenment nor companionship nor sleep.

That last one least of all, still shaken as he was from a close scrape with a spectacular death. No doubt to the dying, all deaths have something of the spectacular to them.

On the last leg of the flight there had been a searing flash just outside the cabin, and a shudder that passed through the whole body of the craft, with what felt like a misfire in one or more of the engines. Then the sensation of unscheduled altitude loss, though of that he couldn’t be sure. His insides clenched up like a fist and his heart hurled itself at his sternum as if wanting to be let out. There were screams and gasps from other passengers. Two infants began to cry, and for once he did not begrudge them. A guy in the first row began praying loudly, even tried to stand and lead the other passengers in the exercise. Remarkable presence of mind. He was quickly joined by two or three of them, one of whom pleaded with his deity in some exotic language. The flight attendants screamed at them to sit down and buckle up.

Then after some minutes, or seconds, everything seemed to stabilize.

The pilot came over the PA and said with pilot-like calm: Sorry about that, folks. We took a lightning strike, which isn’t as bad as it sounds, happens quite a lot, actually. We had a momentary spike in the electrical systems, but they seem to be back on line now, aaaaand we should land safely and on schedule. Just let our flight attendants know if you need anything, and thanks for flying NorthStar.

Miss, said Titus to the attendants.

The man-made order had been restored. Perhaps owing to the prayers. And maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed at the time anyway. But it wasn’t possible not to imagine the whole flush-riveted, clanking leviathan, which really had no business at that altitude and speed anyway, piercing or pin-wheeling to earth in flames. Thus the last few minutes of the life of him and all souls on board: sustained terror and abrupt vaporization. To the righteous and the unrighteous alike. No, he would not be able to clear that picture or that feeling from his mind for weeks.

All the customary post-near-death soul-searching went with it. Was he a coward to have been so rattled? Could he have piloted with steely resolve through skies screaming with flack and Messerschmitts to battle historic evil? And did one’s life count for anything if one never did something like that?

He would like to have made it long enough to do something heroic. Or at least to see the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe. Think how many centuries or millenniums that might have got him.

He had made it to an age—good God, not many years from fifty—when something should have been revealed to him. This had been an examined life—the only kind, someone once said, worth living.

At ten in the morning it was in fact raining, lightly, and he was in their preferred hang-out, sipping something that seemed appropriate to the time of day. That is, something with coffee in it. He waited about half an hour, settling into this trendy little place among all these idle breakfast clubbers and becoming one of them.

Larry—friend, agent, mentor—entered the Café de Café. Tall, massive-torso’ed, with thick dark hair, edging his way among tables and chairs in his frumpy three-piece suit like a special envoy at a diplomatic lunch. He had a voice that carried. Nev! How are you? They shook hands. He sat, ordered coffee and breakfast bagels. Been here long?

I amused myself with a little people-watching.

Great. Anything juicy?

There’s this cute young couple right behind you, said Titus. She’s going on, very animatedly, about something, and he’s sitting there with this look of bland attention, not taking in a word. I just speak from the way it looks, of course. Maybe he’s only truly engaged by sports, or, maybe she’s talking about her girlfriend’s cat. How do you think some pairings ever get started, Larry?

That’s one of the Mysteries, Nev. I mean with a capital M. Howzabout we tackle something easy. Like, the meaning of life. He peered pointedly across at Titus as he stirred his coffee. You didn’t happen to run across anything along those lines, did you, on this globetrot of yours?

If I did, it didn’t call much attention to itself.

"Mm. Well, tell-tell; something must have happened."

Should he tell of his life-altering brush with mortality at thirty-thousand feet? In hindsight he could see that whole episode looking a bit anecdotal to anyone who wasn’t there. He drained his cup and ordered another. He tried to organize the events of the pilgrimage in order of significance, and found this pointless. Eh … I smoked peyote in a sweat tent with an Oglala Sioux shaman named Roland Yellow Hand. Nice chap, but he said if I had no Indian blood in me it was unlikely I’d have a vision. Maybe he was right.

Still, rather snobbish of him. Larry began heartily munching bagels slathered with ham and egg.

Now, that’s just what I thought. Sure, the American Indian has taken a screwing but that’s no excuse for ethnocentrism. He stood by what he said, though.

Uh huh. So—do you think there might be narcotic routes to higher truths?

I very much doubt it, but maybe it’s something you have to try more than once.

OK. And then? Just a wisp of a crack in the well-known patience now.

Then a visit to the Holy Covenant Ecstatic Church of Christ in Bituminous Ridge, West Virginia, for an honest-to-God snake-handling, Satan-out-casting, in-tongues-speaking, exaltation of the spirit. What the congregants called a ecstasy. It was not as pretty as it sounded.

"Well, did anything positive, or just interesting, turn up? Weren’t you at some pagan mixer at Stonehenge?"

Actually it was the Isle of Mona.

Which is … ?

"Was the center of Druidic worship in ancient Britain. Well, still is, actually."

Mhm. So? No human sacrifices, or anything like that, I trust.

It was all quite lovely and innocuous. I didn’t personally experience anything spiritual, I’m sorry to say, but later I had the nicest jog through the English countryside with a couple of the worshippers.

Jog? Little past-prime for that sort of thing, aren’t you?

Thanks for asking, Larry, yeah, and I was sore for a week, but I noticed it was the best feeling I’ve had since I abandoned the athletic life.

Really?

He’d felt purged, purified. One could sit in cafes at ten in the morning self-destructing, but one could live another way, too, as he once had, before morphing into this sad old hack who sat around alluding to an athletic past everyone assumed to be much embellished.

Anyway—then on to a lamasery in Katmandu, where he shaved his head, donned monastic robes and meditated with the monks. It was never clear what they were meditating for or about. Thence to something called the New Metaphysical Foundation in Seattle, where he tried electrical stimulation of the superior posterior parietal lobe—what brain scans showed lighting up during religious and other transcendental experiences. Artificial stimulation of this region was supposed to induce such experiences. In Foundationspeak: ARTSPIR, for Artificially Stimulated Neuro-Spiritual Response. It was thought to be quite up-and-coming.

Fascinating, said Larry, sounding slightly bored. So? Anything?

Maybe I just wasn’t the right guy for this assignment, Larry.

Well, maybe not. If our object was to just dole out something to the public we knew it wanted to hear.

Titus grunted an acknowledgement. He glanced behind Larry. Uh-oh. They seem to be quarreling now.

Damn, said Larry, applying a napkin to his mouth. So. I suppose all this will find its way into something viable in the next few months?

Oh, if not weeks.

You must know that Esquire, which generously underwrote this project, is getting a bit fidgety.

Well, our concept is still a little vague, Larry, but I think I’ve got a nice centerpiece for it. He was conscious of feeling excited about this, or at least trying to appear to be. And, speaking of human sacrifices ... Have you heard of the strange case of a Mr. Joel Contrane?

Larry looked up over his napkin, nodded, smiled wisely. Mr. Joel Contrane, of the ironically named Charity, Idaho? Husband, father, pillar of his community, deacon in his church, etc., etc. And finally, as we might expect after all that, accused of sexual abuse of his daughter?

Mmm’yeah, I think that might be the same one.

Titus had come across this on a website called Heartstoppers from the Heartland, and diverted to Charity, Idaho after finishing up in Seattle. He’d sniffed around for a couple of days and felt unwelcome. Nobody really wanted to talk to him but the chief of police, who expressed skepticism about the story. And the story was this: Mr. Contrane’s daughter had gone off to one of those faith-camps run by his church, something called the Priceless Gift Church. Part of the program there involved these intense spiritual group therapies. At one of them a horrifying repressed memory had been elicited: it seemed Mr. Contrane had been using his daughter, sexually and otherwise, in Satanic rites, with which Charity was suddenly rumored to be rampant. Mr. Contrane had no personal recollection of this; but if The Priceless Gift Church was making the charge that was good enough for him. He had been indicted, jailed, and was refusing to seek bail or cooperate with his appointed counsel.

Yeah, said Larry. I heard about it. Well, that is a hell of a story, Nev. But it shouldn’t be the centerpiece.

What should be the centerpiece?

Nev, dire as this fellow Contrane’s plight is, he’s an insurance adjuster or something, right? Goes to Rotarian meetings, takes his wife to orchid shows? Whacko as this church of his is, that whole thing’s a sidebar. There’s a much bigger story developing.

Bigger story?

Absolutely huge.

Larry let it simmer for a moment, darkening with purpose. Something big coming all right. This wouldn’t be the first time in the years of their association he’d steered Titus down some alternate path. He called it: Just knocking ideas together, like particles in an accelerator, to see what strange new forces might be produced. Nice metaphor, Titus thought. Have you wondered at all what’s been happening in the real world while you were out chasing shadows?

You mean I missed something? Another sip of his Gaelic latté. These were the first hits he’d taken in weeks. Well, except for that one on the plane, after that mishap with the lightning. He must have felt virtuous, entitled. But he couldn’t do this all day, could he? What would he do when he came down?

Larry shook his head sadly. What an insular existence you tend to have, Neville. But you must have noticed that things are going at a certain tilt in this country.

Tilt?

Yeah. While the rest of the civilized world follows the natural path of history, I mean, into the future, we Yanks seem to be regressing. Into some, I don’t know, neo-Dark Age Jesusland Theme Park. Did you know that the U.S. Congress is debating re-defining ‘science’ for the public schools? That is, to include the possibility of supernatural causation?

Huh? They’re debating what?

Did you know there have been book-burnings in Texas and Tennessee? Nothing real mainstream—a wingnut denomination and a couple of Bible colleges. But nobody further up the chain is expressing disapproval. I think they’re going to start burning witches next. We were recently reminded by a certain television evangelist that the Lord says, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’.

Titus produced a wheezy sound like a laugh still-birthing.

Yeah, it was pretty funny. His flock, some three thousand head, cheered with startling enthusiasm. I wish you’d seen it. You’d have split your sides.

Normally, that’s the kind of thing I have to see to believe.

And that’s not all.

"There’s more?"

You know they’re trying to kick up World War Three in the Middle East, right?

Who is?

Some of the good church-going people of the country I mentioned earlier.

Now why in the world would they want to go and do a thing like that?

They think biblical prophesy calls for some kind of, uh, Gunfight at the Holy Land Corral. To clear the lot for Jesus’ Second Coming. Something like that.

Oh. Well, how are all these great ideas sitting with the general public?

Better than you might think. With the public, the administration, half the members of Congress. Dozens of much-blessed multi-zillionaires who are writing checks so big we couldn’t lift ’em. Mega-preachers from one end of this country to the other have got their flocks so stewed up about all this they’re ready to lay down their lives in the streets to take America back. Or they think they are.

Titus was beginning to feel something almost like enjoyment—the perverse enjoyment of people discussing a dark but fascinating turn in the prospects for their world. Take it back from what?

The Antichrist. The Forces of Darkness. Dirtbags like you and me. They’ve got an enemies list longer than Nixon’s.

Titus took a moment. Well I wonder how I missed all that.

Anyway, by that rather tortuous route we come to our big story.

You mean that wasn’t it?

This is pure, unfiltered juice, buddy. Still got a special murmur in your heart for Rolf Devron?

Devron? Titus grunted. He figures in this somewhere?

This may seem like chili cheese fries compared to the End of Days, but some of these same people have targeted him for prosecution. Producing and marketing obscenity.

Huh ... Sorry, Larry. What’s this big story again?

"That’s it. That’s what I think our next piece should be about. Nev, we’re talking top-of-the-line pop-culture star-alignment here. The high priest of hedonism versus the marshaled armies of God. Sex, power, politics, beautiful people—ce-lebrities. This one’s red-hot. Radioactive. Oh, it’s all so very tawdry, I know, and if you can work in some higher-concept stuff about war and science and the First Amendment, so much the better. The point is, we got to get in on this and get in like a badger. He took another look at his old friend rubbing the back of his neck, taking it all in, and said, I know; it’s a lot to absorb when it happens outside the burrow."

Titus murmured, Well, hell, Larry, it’s not that I haven’t been hearing about some of this stuff, but …

The elder statesman sighed mightily. Maybe we’ve all led insular lives for too long. This is something worth coming out of that for, my friend. Not just for our sake. God knows not for Devron’s. This one’s for human reason, for the future of our species. This one’s for that grand, flailing concept called ‘America’. Am I stirring anything up in you here?

America ... Yeah, I kinda remember America.

Well, take another look, said Larry, making a slow visual scan of their surroundings, suddenly sounding tired and wary. It may never have been all it cracked itself up to be anyway, but little by little, a few passive-aggressive souls at a time, desperate for certitudes and messiahs —as our world crumbles around us …

Titus too glanced around at the bubbly morning crowd in the Café de Café. He almost choked on his refreshment. Did they, just for a moment, all pause and leer over at him with faces momentarily cold and calculating and expressionless, like aliens in human form, sizing him up for replication?

Thump—back to their bubbly human pose. Over almost as abruptly as it began. He blinked, let out his breath. Head beginning to sink and swim at the same time. Should he order another? No, dammit; this had to stop.

How’re Paolo and Francesca doing?

Uh-oh. She’s gone. He’s on his cell phone.

Aaaah, I had such high hopes for that one, too. Maybe they fell to arguing about religion. Well, I’m outta here. He called for the check. Things to do. What’ve you got going the rest of the day? Anything productive?

Titus’s upper body slumped a bit. I don’t know, he said.

Larry sniffed the tab. "Nineteen bucks for a couple of coffees? Oh, dear God. Irish, Nev? And not even noon yet?"

We’ve all had these damp spells, haven’t we, Larry? Titus rubbed the back of his neck again, looked off somewhere.

The wise mentor sat quietly for a moment, then he turned fatherly, almost putting a hand on Titus’s shoulder. I’d confine you to a monastery if I could. But you’d probably corrupt it. He peeled off some bills and put them on the table. Well, I’ll see you later, Nev. The broad, tailored back weaved out through tables, chairs, poseurs. Titus watched him go with a sense of loss, glanced at the clock. Little past eleven. He tried to assign some meaning to this.

The clatter and conviviality of the Café de Café carried on around him. He looked outside. Nice cheery overcast starting to break up. Sun often depressed him slightly, especially when it broke through after a nice spell of rain and gloom, which was usually more to his liking. Police sirens seemed to be shrieking all over town. He took out a notepad and pen, which it was one of his abiding good habits to carry around and keep handy. He poised one over the other, thinking there had to be a nuance or two here in this clean, well-lighted place, or a stray thought, worth noting. Paolo had gone. Probably some yuppie securities trader who painted his face for football games. And even he’d moved on. The crowd was still cloaking its sinister alien intent in false earthly gaiety.

The only party in the room able to see through this deceit wrestled with himself briefly and ordered another Irish.

CHAPTER 2

THE PREACHER LADY AND THE ORPHANS OF THE STORM

TWO ENGAGEMENTS ONLY!

If you consider JUST ONE PATH TO SALVATION this year, make

THIS THE ONE!

A FLIGHT TO HEAVEN IS STANDING BY—DOES YOUR SOUL HAVE ITS BOARDING PASS?

And the like.

Opening Night Event at the Grand Pavilion, the newly-constructed jewel of a proud Eastern American city. Klieg lights were deployed around this splendid structure, trained alternately on the Pavilion itself and, one might say, heavenward. Beacons to the perplexed and the reborn, sharply incandescent in the heathen night, like the Star in the East, or Albert Speer’s cathedrals of ice. It must have been visible from the Appalachians. The Pavilion staff and its clients loved these chilly, hazy evenings, which imparted to the beams such eye-catching resolution.

A broad walkway extended before the main entrance, sided with imposing balustrades like the forearms of the Sphinx. Massed along the outside of the walkway was a multitude of some three or four hundred. There was a splashy, almost vulgar diversity to their dress and age, but an apparent sameness of spirit—a shared joyful tension. They might have passed for refugees of all classes tossed together on the shore of a newly-mandated homeland. The prevailing mood was mannered, but festive. Almost party-like. As a few dozens filed inside the Pavilion, more swarmed in from the outlying urban night.

At about seven o’clock an officious-looking motorcade approached. In its center was a distinctive white van on whose one flank was that most familiar of all sacred images, the Michelangelo thing of God and Adam almost touching hands—Adam’s loins discreetly off-view—and on the other a smiling Jesus, beckoning from the stratocumuli. The motorcade stopped at the front of the walkway. The side door of the van opened and some sturdy-looking, well-tailored men stepped out. They offered their hands. A sublimely handsome woman followed. She could have been levitating—her feet never appeared beneath her long blue gown. She was tall, something close to six feet, middle-aged but still nicely-figured. Her blond hair was elegantly, not extravagantly, coiffed, her face a classic cameo, crafted in ivory. She smiled, waved. An epic cheer rose up from the multitude.

Maureen Aspenwald, superstar, spiritual tribune of the people, did not duck into the stage entrance from a privileged concourse. She passed through her admirers to the front door, touching outstretched hands along the way.

Maureen! Maureen!

Hello! Good to see you! God bless you!

Her voice was the equal of her reputation—lilting, strong. She was as common and uncommon as the people who had come to see her. She was all things to all of them: mother, seer, confessor, friend. And, at least for this decade, of which she was considered an icon, she was news. Media-persons were present in force, thrusting microphones and cameras before radiant faces and gushing with simple media questions, like, What is it that is happening here?

A fragile-looking young man with shoulder-length hair grasped for the words: Oh … what’s happening here is, like, oh, wow, it’s beyond my, it’s like, it’s as if God Himself were here touching me and touching everyone, and it’s like love, such a feeling of love and joy and peace like the whole world is glowing with God’s love …

Well; that seemed to express it perfectly. Around him, people grinned, nodded, said Amen, and, Say it, brother, things like that.

What has brought you here?

African-Americans were fairly well represented at these things and their views were much-sought. A vigorous new spirit of inclusion in the megachurches, of which everyone was so proud. This subject, about thirty-five and denim-suited, turned to the newsman and smiled. Man, he said, what’s brought me is the power of the Lord, simple as ABC.

But, said the newsman, with just a touch of newsman’s cynicism, isn’t Maureen Aspenwald the real star of this show? Doesn’t she, by sheer charisma, sort of, upstage the Big Guy Himself?

No, man, said the subject, laughing. "Let me set you straight. I’m a dry-wall man. Everybody’s good at something and I’m good at that. It isn’t much but I feel good about what I do. Now Maureen could put up her own dry-wall, I guess, but if she wanted it done right she’d call in a pro. I can pray by myself; I can shout ‘Hallelujah’ without anybody’s help. But when I really want to flip out, singin’, shoutin’, praisin’ God—I call in a pro. And I’ll thank you not to go callin’ my God ‘the Big Guy’."

A small subset of the crowd, huddling around this encounter and listening in, laughed and cheered.

OK. Sorry. Thank you, sir, said the newsman. He seemed, well, impressed in spite of himself.

An auntly woman with an elaborate hive of hair bound to her chin with a bright silk scarf was asked: Why all the excitement? Come inside and bear witness, young man, she said imperiously, if you really want to know.

So it was in this moment of that frenetic, omni-directional swell and displacement, the Great American Revival of its Old Time Religion. From the brash and bountiful array of gospel shows and organizations that held the citizens of the world’s only remaining, if faltering, superpower in absolute thrall, Dame Aspenwald had led or ridden hers to the top. And America followed.

Maureen! Our fourth child was born last week. We named her after you!

That’s wonderful, guys, wonderful. God bless you and all four of them!

And we plan to keep up the good work!

Be fruitful and multiply, my friends, be fruitful and multiply.

The Maureen Aspenwald Evangelical Crusade was an old-style traveling megachurch supremely adapted to the digital, corporatist and communication age. Details of its operations were not made public, but it was thought to directly employ two or three thousand people, and have a disclosed annual budget of some six and a half million, coming from sources almost too numerous and varied to track, to say nothing of comprehensive federal and state tax shrug-offs. It was thought to prosper more from donors and investments than from ticket sales. It was also known to plow some of those proceeds into social and charity work.

"Freak show! This is nothing but a big-budget carnival for the gullible and the deluded!"

Somebody had begun booming through loudspeakers mounted on a big pick-up that rumbled by on the parkway. "God does not exist. Religion is superstition. Wake up! Put away those checkbooks! You are being shaken down by hucksters and schizoids."

The crowd fell into a startled silence, staring at the guy blankly, all heads turning together as he passed. Some of them made faces and went back to the party. Others closer to the parkway began hooting, howling, then throwing things, some of them being hard things that clanked alarmingly off the truck.

Maureen too had stopped to gawk at the disturbance. She turned to her security chief. Major, will you please have someone go over there and explain to those people that that man has a right to air his views too? Without getting stoned. We are Christians, we are not a mob.

Bravo One to Ground Six, said the major into his tactical com device in the cool mechanical tones of a field commander under fire. Tell those people to knock that crap off. You can tell ’em that’s from Mama Bear.

It was a drive-by. They guy had made one pass and kept on going. Coward, some thought.

We’ll pray for you! someone called after him.

The MAEC was widely hailed as the next wave of an industry coming out of a rough run of scandals and embarrassments. Four or five of the top-grossers had been shaken out. Some of their pastors made tearful public confessions and waited quietly for things to cool down; some denied everything and fought back. The popular verdict was not long in coming: All was forgiven, all forgotten. It seemed, in fact, that the public’s faith had been somehow re-energized, renewed, by the whacking it had just taken. Maureen Aspenwald, who had led the nation in prayers of forgiveness for her competitors, and with no taint attached to her, was the heroine and star of that renewal.

Maureen! We lost our tickets at the bus station. Can we still come in?

I insist! Just stay close to me. And put a little something extra in the offering plate.

Bystanders and newsmen lapped it up.

Questions were sometimes cautiously raised about the MAEC—about its aggressive showmanship, its autocratic structure, its undisclosed finances. A few investigative reporters had made inquiries; nothing appeared to be out of lawful or ethical bounds.

A man wearing a baseball cap with a Cross and a Star of David mutually superimposed, waving pamphlets and documents, was now pushing his way forward through the crowd. Maureen! Miss Aspenwald! We need your support for the Temple Reconstruction Project. Will you say something about it tonight? You must know how important this is!

Maureen again slowed to a stop, looked him over; her whole confident and luminous manner seemed to come a little undone, go into freeze frame. An aide stepped between her and the man. Please, sir, nothing political tonight, alright?

This is not political, sir, the man huffed. This is prophesy! And we Americans are the only ones who have the understanding and the means to see it fulfilled!

The guy had touched on something there. America, finished as a superpower? Tell that to these swarms, these masses of worshippers and devotees, tithers and patriots. No way. Not as long as it still had this, one of its most vibrant industries and exports.

I appreciate your fervency, sir, said Maureen finally. I’m afraid that’s more of a foreign policy issue. I am concerned with peoples’ souls. She shook loose, perked up, moved on.

You must say something about it tonight, Maureen, the man called after her. This is about peoples’ souls’ too!

Maureen! Maureen! the masses cried, reaching out, hoping to touch and be touched.

In some cases to be cured. A man was pushed forward in a wheelchair tricked out in patriotic and military regalia. He wore white shirt and tie under a military field jacket with a row of medals. Maureen! Please. Do you have the gift of healing? They say you do. I believe you do. My spinal cord got severed in Sudan, for my country. I was Marines, Force Recon. My legs are paralyzed. Can you help me?

She stopped again, she leaned down, taking both his hands in hers and going eye-to-eye with him. Her own eyes moistened, glinted in the harsh Pavilion lights. My friend, she said, I don’t know why this happened to you, and I cannot cure it. I do not have that kind of power. I wish I did. All I can tell you is …

Faith healings and other flashy miraculous displays were not part of the Style. Her strength seemed to lay in nothing more than charisma and earnestness—in her ability to impart to the faithful, as she did now, an understanding of their place in a wondrous creation consisting mainly of the real and familiar. Didn’t that very creation seem, at the same time, overwhelmingly tragic and mortal? She could make them understand that in the Divine Scheme it didn’t matter. Ultimately every injustice would be made right, every tear dried. Faith and joy—in one of the Crusade’s hallmark buzz-phrases—were still possible in the Secular Age.

She prayed with the petitioner, hugged him and, regretfully, had to leave him. Thank you, Maureen. Thank you! Thank you! The man wept joyously.

Maureen’s staff made schedules and she routinely disrupted them, as now, by stopping to have personal exchanges with followers. A young couple, gangling, gaping, barely out of their teens, came forward to ask her blessing on their impending marriage, and she embraced them both. A moment later she held a man’s hands and prayed silently with him for the deliverance of his daughter from some awful cult.

And some here had come seeking answers to troubling questions.

Maureen! Maureen! Do you think pets go to heaven?

Possibly, maybe, but I’m afraid I don’t have the inside track on that.

How about tigers and bears, I mean, if they’ve killed somebody?

All right, all right, we’re running a little late here, folks, said the major. Please.

The start of the service was now some twenty minutes behind schedule when she stopped again, this time before a group of five young people who, to no one’s particular notice, had been hanging around on the periphery, singing with guitars and tambourines. Such spontaneities were common at Maureen’s gatherings, as were amens, hallelujahs, even speaking in tongues, though that last was not encouraged. But something was not quite right here. Maureen, of course, sensed it. There was nothing of joy or praise in their music. What there was, was something dissonant, discordant, singularly out of place in the eye of all this exuberance. Onlookers now picked up on it too; they stared, shuffled, waited. The waifs’ singing frayed to a stop. Maureen smiled.

Hello, she said. They stared back without answering. Maureen’s aides stiffened. One of them stepped over to the group where he lightly but emphatically touched one of the young men on the shoulder.

Excuse me, said the aide. This is Maureen Aspenwald. She’d like to talk to you.

The boy recoiled a bit from the aide’s touch. His glazed eyes widened. He said, Huh?

I’m Maureen Aspenwald, she said, her manner determined, patient, charitable.

The boy hesitated, then replied: We’re the Orphans of the Storm.

Why are you here? Maureen asked.

Cause we ain’ nowhere else, the boy shrugged.

Bystanders tensed. By his look the aide would just as soon have tossed these sediments back into the drainage flow from which they had somehow separated. He glanced for direction at Maureen—her beatific smile rendered him meek as the inheritors of the earth. Since it seems to you that one place is as good as another, she said, why don’t you come inside? As my guests.

The boy’s eyes widened further. No, I don’t … He stared at the beaming, sympathetic faces around him, as if they had distended into something phantasmal and menacing. He began backing away. Come on, he said to his companions. This scene is, like, totally, creepshow. The companions seemed frozen in place. He backed away further; he turned, shambled off, dragging his feet, taking occasional fretful glances behind him, till he was one with the darkness.

One of the others reflected for a moment and followed him. Two more vacillated. The fifth had turned to stare open-mouthed after the companions who had fled, then turned back to Maureen. She was pale, lightly freckled, with long, frazzled red hair. She was very pretty. Or had been. She was in her mid twenties, or at least long removed from girlhood, and likely from innocence too. Maureen stared fixedly at this girl. Whether she was hostile, fearful or merely curious, none could have said.

What were they afraid of? said Maureen to the girl.

The aide turned to Maureen and reminded her, again, that they were now over half an hour behind schedule. She waved this aside and chided him gently as she continued to look at the girl: Major, I have come to minister to those who stand outside as well as those who have bought their tickets.

What perfectly chosen words those were. They seemed to reach the girl instantly. Maureen spread her arms in a gesture that seemed to say, I am here, you are welcome, but you have to cross this last small distance on your own. The girl took a few faltering steps, then fell forward in a wash of relief and surrender and tears into Maureen’s embrace. The crowd let out its breath in a soft, soulful Ooooooohhh …

Will you come inside? said Maureen.

Yes, said the girl.

Maureen turned and proceeded into the Pavilion, her right arm over the shoulder and her left hand holding the hands of the red-haired girl. The girl’s two remaining companions, dazed and docile, were ushered in as well. The fans who had lost their tickets fell in and yellow-brick-road danced behind them.

Among the crowd were a few who had not come to adore Maureen or to be saved. The cynical reporter was a free-lancer contracted to Viscount Magazine for a story on the MAEC. There was a very large young man in coveralls monogrammed with Moe, Curly, and Larry’s Pies, who had been hired by somebody to mortify her with a face-full of meringue. And a few others, an unorganized handful of doubters and mockers, stood about taking all this in as if witnessing the emergence of a unicorn from an egg.

Maureen and entourage went inside. The huge crowd already assembled in the seats had been entertained by warm-up acts of dancers, comics, gospel-rockers, light-shows, pyrotechnics. A popular illusionist had drawn shrieks and astonishment from the crowd by duplicating the feat of Pharaoh’s sorcerer—transforming a staff into a serpent. A cheap trick, folks, just a cheap magician’s trick, he assured them. Now, you remember, friends, that faithful Moses turned the tables on mighty Pharaoh—but not with a cheap magician’s trick. Nossir! He did it with the real thing. And that real thing was … He now saw Maureen coming up the aisle. "Here she is, folks, here’s the real—", the rest being drowned out in a roar of applause.

The orchestra struck up with Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus. The worshippers, some twenty thousand strong, came to their feet, and exulted. Maureen’s male praetorians, military veterans all, most from elite units of one kind or another, began reflexively to march in time.

Maureen took the stage, still arm-in-arm with the red-haired girl. The entourage took their seats in a double row behind the podium, already occupied by various special guests, and before the chorus, which was assembled under an enormous floodlit cross, an American flag, and two gigantic flat-screens which had tracked Maureen’s arrival and ministrations outside and now displayed towering twin images of her face on both sides of the stage.

Some fringe observers dared wonder what the penniless carpenter’s son from Nazareth would have made of all this.

Extra chairs were called for and appeared in places of honor for the three Orphans. Maureen squeezed hands and brushed cheeks with the introductory speaker, Governor Beaumeier. The Governor raised his hands till the roar had subsided and the twenty thousand had seated themselves. He cleared his throat, leaned into the microphone, said a few words, introducing the lady who needed no introduction. The roar broke out again as Maureen stood. All lights had dimmed, except a single brilliant streamer from overhead, glistening off her hair and shoulders, as if she shone with some special favor, some saintly iridescence. She raised her arms again, in the familiar, all-embracing gesture that was a trademark. Then she lowered them.

The assembly quieted. Maureen let a moment pass as she gripped the sides of the podium. She took in a great breath, and delivered what they came for:

My dear friends—this morning I knelt on the carpet in the Oval Office with the President of the United States. They knew that. Word had passed. And hardly a Chief Executive in historical memory had neglected the duty to pray in the Oval Office with some evangel or other. Still—it took their breath away. The President of the United States. There was even a wave of applause The sitting president was a champion of this demographic. He was scheduled to appear later through a satellite link to the big-screens and say a few words. He had asked me to come to pray with him, to petition God’s guidance in this troubled time.

They stirred; they nodded gravely, excitedly. None here had to be filled in on how troubled these times were, but that reality seemed to pass through them as a shudder of pleasure.

"Present were several high-ranking members of Congress, and five cabinet secretaries. These titans, these leaders of the most powerful nation on earth, were asking me to represent them … before God. I said, ‘Gentlemen … my purpose on earth is to make the great and the humble alike realize how wonderfully small … is that gulf between them and the Almighty …’ "

There were pauses between phrases, and powerful emphases on key words. Her voice could fortify and deepen at certain points, then soften again, lilt, almost sing. She seldom actually gestured, except to lunge forward from the waist for emphasis, or to give imperious tosses of her head.

"Two thousand years ago He met us more than half way across that distance … He became one of us … He took on flesh, He hungered, He thirsted, He wept, so that He could personally offer His hand to anyone who cared to take it. For that, we crucified Him. But He lives, and that strong and wonderful hand is still extended to men and women everywhere, co-existing with them—in them, and of them. I wonder how many of us really grasp the significance of this. You do not need seers, or revelators, or prophets or priests to intercede for you, to bring you together with Him. In that respect, I am a fraud! And your clergymen are frauds!"

Little by little, the assembly understood, grinned, laughed. No spiritual leader had ever said such things to them.

" … He is already here! All you have to do is open the eyes of your heart and soul before Him, stand, kneel, leap, whisper, shout … any way you want, but say to Him: ‘Oh Lord, I know You are there and I receive You as You receive me!’ … And when I said this to them, my friends, at that moment, these mighty men … spontaneously and with one mind … fell to their knees, and tearfully, joyfully, contritely … praised God!"

Aaaaaaaaah, moaned the faithful under a field of lifted hands that swayed like amber waves of grain.

The observer from Viscount was already scribbling some impressions and notes:

The world beyond these favored shores is a nest of heathen fanaticism, sinister collusions and suspect technology. Within them we struggle under the specters of spiritual doubt, economic stagnation, social unrest … But the picture of our highest ruling council kneeling in private audience with God, with tears and humility in the Oval Office, imparted boundless reassurance. And here before them was the very diplomat who had brokered this ultimate summit conference. It seemed to them in that moment that in her hands rested the fate, not just of American, but of Western civilization, and that all was secure …

Tonight, Maureen continued, I have left the temples of power and walk with the ordinary and the meek. This morning I embraced the President of the United States … tonight I embraced a lonely and lost young woman. And I know both times, with all the certainty of the breath of my life, that the power and the love of God was surging equally, and that He loved and treasured both these, his children, equally.

While the faithful cheered, the red-haired girl, sitting on the stage among dignitaries and friends of the management stared up at Maureen. She was little more than a solemn shadow in the darkened section of stage, but the glare of the spotlight on the Great Lady reflected off silvery rivulets of tears on her face.

Unnoticed by anyone else in attendance, a certain young man in the choir was staring at this girl. He had been struck, stunned, by the sight of her as she came up the stage and took her seat. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, even off the back of her head. He couldn’t have said why exactly—the girls in the choir were all quite striking-looking.

Tonight I have as my personal guests a number of people who were at one time known to you principally by their sins.

Maureen’s tone and expression now clouded. She remarked that sinners had every opportunity to redeem themselves before God, but not always before Christians. The spirit of forgiveness was much touted yet little practiced. But tonight, reminding her listeners that Jesus consorted with sinners and shared his kingdom with a thief, she presented the first of two featured friends in Christ: Darius Peavey.

A tall, rangy black man of about fifty rose from the line-up behind