Monthly Archives: February 2022

Evan Wycliff – Practicing Minister and Amateur Sleuth – Thinking About Thinking #49

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Evan Wycliff is an amateur sleuth, the main character of my mysteries Preacher Finds a Corpse, Preacher Fakes a Miracle, and Preacher Raises the Dead. Amateur sleuth is a well-established subgenre of mystery, but stories about clergymen who investigate crimes are perhaps a sub-subgenre. As a reader myself, my favorites of these are the Rabbi Ben mysteries by Marvin J. Wolf, including A Scribe Dies in Brooklyn.

Amazon.com: A Scribe Dies In Brooklyn: A Rabbi Ben Mystery (Rabbi Ben Mysteries): 9780989960021: Wolf, Marvin J.: BooksNow, putting on my writer hat, I will admit that casting an amateur sleuth in the role of investigator is one of the easier choices. If the main character were a law-enforcement official, the technical challenges for the author are much more restrictive. Those plots fall into the category of police procedural. The author must understand the protocols of criminal investigations, including crime-scene surveys and forensic analysis.

But protagonists who are amateurs needn’t follow the rules – especially because they are likely to be ignorant of them and – what’s more – they have no business poking their noses where they don’t belong.

In the Preacher novels, it isn’t Evan’s intention to do any of this. In the first book, Preacher Finds a Corpse, he happens on the body of his best friend in a cornfield. Bob Taggart is dead – apparently by suicide, which is also obvious to the cops and to the coroner. But Evan wonders – even if no one else pulled the trigger – did someone drive Bob to do it? Wouldn’t that be a sin – if not a crime?

Evan’s curse – or his blessing – is his curious mind. And, like good investigators, professional or not, he’s both a data-driller and a close observer. At the outset of the series, Evan gets only part-time gigs – as a guest preacher at the local Baptist church and as a skip tracer (bill collector) for the town’s car dealership.

And because he has some success finding the truth, false rumors circulate in this southern Missouri farm community that Evan is a faith healer. His growing reputation attracts people who need help – not just spiritual guidance but also resolutions to personal crises that no one else in town seems to have any interest in solving.

So – one might ask – are the Evan Wycliff mysteries Christian fiction? I’d think not – my sense of that genre is it’s intended to provide inspiration – to offer answers to questions.

In Evan’s world, there are always more questions than answers.

New Interpretations of Bible Parables – Thinking About Thinking #48

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Hands folded over a bible with the text "Could famous bible parables contain hidden meanings?"

If you’re having trouble with your religious faith, studying theology will only make matters worse. In my Evan Wycliff Mysteries series, the protagonist is a Baptist minister who often has serious doubts. For my background research, I delved into some recent Biblical scholarship, where I found some remarkable reinterpretations of the old stories.

One of these latter-day sources is Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls by Barbara Thiering. This Australian scholar applied a traditional rabbinic pesher analysis – used primarily by Hebrew scholars to find hidden meanings in the Old Testament. Thiering maintains that the New Testament gospels are full of coded messages intended to be passed among rebellious Jews who sought to hide their controversial beliefs and doctrines from conservative sects such as the Scribes and the Pharisees.

For example, Thiering asserts that the parable of turning water into wine at the wedding feast was not to be taken literally. Traditional religious practice segregated women in worship services and used water as a sacramental beverage. Jesus and his rebels advocated including women and the infirm in all ceremonies, and their sacraments used wine. The parable therefore uses powerful symbolism to emphasize a doctrinal dispute.

The cover of Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls

And – which is more miraculous – a one-time chemistry trick or changing worship practices from ancient times to this to include women?

Thiering also thinks the story of the virgin birth contains an encrypted message. In the Essene community, a betrothed couple were made to live apart until the wedding, Mary was sent to live with pious women (who were like caregiving nuns), in the “House of the Virgins.” This suggests that Mary – and not necessarily Joseph – was descended from the house of David and a member of the sect aligned with the revolutionaries Jesus would eventually lead. The story of the virgin birth is therefore coded proof of the matrilineal legitimacy of Jesus to claim the throne of David.

As you might expect, Thiering’s conclusions have been shouted down by traditional theologians. She died in 2015, so these days she’s not around to defend herself. But you can be sure there is a generation of seminarians who have her on their reading lists.

I imagine many faithful churchgoers don’t delve much into theological scholarship. That’s what ministers are supposed to do at divinity school. Sunday-school teachers must certainly study the Bible, and a source they might routinely consult would be The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, a standard text in seminaries. Not coincidentally, that book was the inspiration for fictional Evan Wycliff’s family name.

Understand, I’m not endorsing or pushing such alternative views. I do find them intriguing, even at some times appealing. But these speculations figure strongly into the plotting of the mystery series because Evan is – as he admits – both perpetually curious and a habitual doubter.

An image of the paperback version of Preacher Raises the Dead: An Evan Wycliff Mystery

Do You Love Your Own Mother This Much? Thinking About Thinking #47

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A black and white painting of a mother bathing her child's feet with the text "Do you love your own mother this much?"

Here’s my book review of The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt.

Memoir is perhaps the most frequently attempted book genre, but unless there’s a celebrity photo on the cover, these manuscripts rarely find a mainstream publisher, much less become bestsellers. But in this case, there are two smiling portraits on the cover and two famous brands – television journalist Anderson Cooper and his fashion designer mother Gloria Vanderbilt.

However, until recently anyway, the general public may not have been aware of the family relationship. For his part, Cooper has assiduously avoided the association. His mother, for her part, has been anything but shy about using and exploiting the name. Her signature jeans and fragrances have been her single most commercially successful venture, and other than lending cachet to the brand, this was a self-made fortune among several she has attained and lost. And without trading on the name Vanderbilt, Cooper has made his reputation on his own as a media phenomenon. He is today one of the most credible names in broadcasting, and not because he carried the famous name.

The cover of The Rainbow Comes and Goes, showing Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper sitting next to each other and holding hands.

The Rainbow Comes and Goes is an exchange of intimate personal correspondence conducted via email while the 92-year-old Vanderbilt stayed mostly in her luxury apartment in Manhattan and Cooper jetted around the globe covering news assignments, mostly in locales ravaged by war or natural disaster. Cooper says he took the initiative to get closer to her, and the lessons learned in the book prove the wisdom of his intentions.

One trait these two share is a dogged ability to withstand profound loss – and not just survive, but become the stronger for it. They share two huge untimely wounds. First, her third husband and Cooper’s father Wyatt Emory Cooper died of open-heart surgery at age 50. He left two young sons, Carter and Anderson. The second blow came when Carter committed suicide at age 23.

Gloria Vanderbilt is open about the intimate and sometimes sensational details of her life story. Cooper relates these to his own personal struggles, but details of his personal relationships are not included. Vanderbilt could have owned to four surnames from a succession of celebrity husbands: Pat Dechico, presumed mobster and former husband as well as rumored murderer of actress Thelma Todd; Leopold Stokowski, brilliant orchestra conductor and then crusty older man; Cooper’s father Wyatt, a small-town boy from a poor rural family who became a Hollywood screenwriter; and legendary movie director Sidney Lumet. And we also learn from this book that had she been so inclined, she could have added other names to the list – including Howard Hughes and Frank Sinatra.

Cooper says he set out on a career as a war correspondent because he wanted to see how people who had no advantages coped with sudden and profound loss. He told the story of his early career in another book, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival.

A significant portion of Vanderbilt’s confession centered on her difficult and mostly estranged relationship with her mother, the glamorous widow Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt. Cooper’s mother summarizes the humiliating custody battle and trial as her aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, sued to make the child a ward of the court on the grounds that her mother was unfit. This story was widely publicized at the time and is a major episode in the daughter’s autobiography, Once Upon a Time: A True Story, and in Barbara Goldsmith’s biography, Little Gloria Happy at Last, which was made into a TV miniseries. Perhaps surprisingly, the sedate “Aunt Gert” – that’s Gertrude Vanderbilt – comes across in this account as the girl’s well-meaning benefactor and ardent protector, but never one who was demonstrative with her affections.

Little Gloria was cherished by her nanny and her maternal grandmother, but she never really knew her father. Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, who died from his alcoholism just a year before she was born.

The main takeaway from Rainbow is clear from its stated intention to have an intimate exchange with a loved one. As the generation of Boomers must face the challenges of caring for parents whose faculties may be diminishing, here’s an example that it may not be too late to talk frankly. As Cooper explains, “I know now that it’s never too late to change the relationships you have with someone important in your life – a parent, a child, a lover, a friend. All it takes is a willingness to be honest and shed your old skin. Let go of the long-standing assumptions and slights you still cling to.”

But between the lines of The Rainbow Comes and Goes is another powerful truth, one so fundamental to the national debate. The Vanderbilts were the one-percenters of yesteryear. When Cooper’s great grandfather Cornelius Vanderbilt II split the family inheritance with his brother William in the mid-19th century, between them they controlled the largest personal fortune in the world. But by the standards of today’s multibillionaires, that money and its power have all but dissipated.

As a society, we may fear the overweening influence of the rich and powerful, but in America at least, their personal empires often don’t survive more than a few generations.

Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt both learned how to reinvent themselves. It didn’t hurt that they were both born to comfort, but their achievements and any happiness they’ve gained have come not from their presumed advantages, but from personal resilience in the face of anguish.

Update: Gloria Vanderbilt passed away after the book was published.

Cover of Bonfire of the Vanderbilts

A hundred-year-old secret locked is in a painting. The painting’s owner, Los Angeles Museum of Art, refuses to admit I got it right. But, hey, it’s fiction, the art historians say. Why should anyone take it seriously? What, according to my decades-long research into this painting that obsessed me so, did Cornelius Vanderbilt II not want you to know? Hint: Vanderbilt and his reputed mentor, banker J. P. Morgan, were rivals in the Episcopal Church hierarchy, each claiming to be more righteous than the other.

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Evan Wycliff – Agnostic Minister? Thinking About Thinking #46

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A black and white picture of a man praying in a church. The text reads "Can a Practicing Minister be an Agnostic?"

Can a practicing minister be an agnostic?

Evan Wycliff, the protagonist of Preacher Raises the Dead (latest and third in my mystery series), might not be a full-time agnostic, but there are days when he certainly has his doubts. In the first book in the series, Preacher Finds a Corpse, he’s just returned to his rural hometown, Appleton City in southern Missouri, because he’s given up on his studies. He earned a degree at Harvard Divinity, but along the way he learned way too much about the hypocritical and corrupt history of Christianity. Then, hoping to find better answers to the “big questions” in science, he undertook postgraduate work in astrophysics. He found those conclusions baffling as well.

As an unemployed college dropout, how can he make his way? He grew up on the farm, but these days it’s tough for farm owners to get by, let alone their farmhands. So he takes the occasional opportunity as guest preacher at the local Baptist church. And because he’s a skilled data-driller, he tracks down debtors who have skipped on their car loans (whom he tends to forgive more than he chastises).

In the second book, Preacher Fakes a Miracle, Evan helps a girl who is afflicted with epilepsy. Then the rumor around town alleges he’s a faith healer because, they assume, he must have cast out demons.

In the third book, Evan’s life gets a lot more complicated as he’s challenged with becoming a more responsible member of the community. The old pastor and his mentor Rev. Marcus Thurston decides to retire, and Evan reluctantly takes on the role of full-time minister, pastor of the church.

That’s when he finds out that not only preaching sermons, but also visiting the sick and the dying, along with officiating at weddings and funerals, is hard work. It’s a job – often a tedious one. And, some days, Evan just can’t find it in his heart to believe.

Fueling his doubts are the theories he’s studied of cosmologists who assert the increasingly accepted notion of a “godless universe.”

A book cover for "The Big Picture" by Sean Carroll. The cover features a glowing strand of DNAPhysicist Sean Carroll of CalTech is one of the proponents of the godless-universe hypothesis. He advances his argument in his book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. The core of his argument is naturalism – meaning that the physical universe – encompassing everything humans can sense or measure – is all that there is. In an interview with Clara Moskowitz published in Scientific American, Carroll explains:  “There’s actually a movement called religious naturalism. Religion involves a whole bunch of things — practices, casts of mind, morals, etc., so you can certainly imagine calling yourself religious, reading the Bible, going to church and just not believing in God. I suspect the number of people who do that is much larger than the number of people who admit to it.”

As I discussed in my post about Brian Greene‘s book Until the End of Time, a trending consensus among cosmologists is that the dual processes of entropy (disintegration) and evolution (integration), can explain the emergence of complexity without God as creator or cause. Physicist Brian Cox, in his recent comments on the movie Don’t Look Up, implied that the most significant role of humans may be to create meaning in a meaningless universe. The philosophy of existentialism, which arose in the mid-twentieth century, possibly in response to the horrors of WWII, holds that the universe is fundamentally empty and meaningless. But as psychologists know all too well, human beings are “meaning-making machines.” We’re prone to finding meaning and purpose even in random events. This skill is a useful survival tool, making it routine for us to take lessons from our experiences to avoid future harm. An alternative view is the prevalent New Age belief is that there are no accidents in the universe.

Existentialists might say that people who find comfort in religion aren’t wrong – they’ve found useful meaning, even if that meaning is not objectively provable. But the naturalists may assert that everything that exists is simply the sum total of 14 billion years of accidents.

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