Nonbeliever portrays evangelicals

John Marks was a producer for "60 Minutes," working on a story about evangelicals in fall 2003 when two interviewees, Don and Lillie McWhinney, asked him, "Will you be left behind?" They meant left behind at the end of the world when, conservative Christians believe, nonbelievers in Jesus will not be taken to heaven. Marks replied he would be left behind because he is an atheist.

But the question resonated with a man who had been a born-again Christian in his youth, and he was inspired to write a spiritual memoir and profile of evangelicalism. He interviewed more than 400 Christians for his book, "Reasons to Believe" (Ecco/Harper).

Marks, 44, is now a full-time author, living in Northampton. The following are excerpts from an interview earlier this month.

Q.You write that you changed as you wrote the book. How [did you change], given that you essentially answer the McWhinneys' question the same way at the end of the book as at the beginning?

As I set out, I thought my evangelical faith was a part of my life that hadn't left much of a trace. But I discovered that that part of me is quite permanent and quite huge. There's a language I speak in common with these people. I don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I don't believe that his sacrifice and resurrection has redeemed me for all time. And yet, there's an optimism and joy I feel, almost against my will, that comes from that experience [of having been an evangelical].

Q.You respect what they believe, even though you don't believe what they believe?

The idea of the resurrection in an ordinary human life as a redemptive and effective way of dealing with loss, grief, and suffering - I do respect that. It works in many, many lives. There is an ability to survive and thrive in an adverse experience that comes through this transaction of faith.

Q.To borrow your word from the book, what do you still "loathe" about evangelicals?

What I find almost viscerally repugnant is their relationship to authority. In the case of fundamentalists, there is an abject response to the authority of God that translates down the ladder to political authority. If the political authority feels as if it's biblically ordained, there's an unquestioning response to that authority, the authority vested in the man over the woman, in the head of a church over the congregation. I'm not going to say mine is a more democratic spirit, but I suppose I do actually feel that.

Q.What did you learn from the McWhinneys?

When I first met them, [I thought] they were almost walking caricatures of the evangelical Christian. They believe in the Rapture, that when the end time comes, people will be taken up into the air, and the nonbelievers will be left behind on earth to suffer. There was a cardboard quality, I thought, to their belief.

When I met them the second time, after we'd done the "60 Minutes" piece, they told me about their bipolar son, roughly my age, who had tried to kill himself [and] had disappeared and was believed to be living in a homeless shelter in Dallas and whom they had decided to commit. They spoke with great sorrow. They didn't say he was possessed by the devil. They resented that characterization - and remember, these are Christians who believe there is a living Satan. We agreed I would join them for church [the following] Sunday.

Five hours later, their son walked up the onramp of a highway and was killed by a car. On Sunday, I got in the car, we were having a chat, and then Don suddenly told me their son had been killed. [He said] his son was not gone - he was walking the streets of the heavenly city, and we know from Revelations that that city has walls made of pure jasper - describing this world that, for nonbelievers, is just pure fantasy. I became aware of the way this sense that God is real, that there is this heavenly kingdom - it is not window-dressing. In moments of grief and deep sorrow, people like the McWhinneys do reach for this, and it is the consolation.

Q.You have fascinating data in the book from the pollster George Barna that many evangelicals don't believe some of the hard-core theology [or] go to church all the time. Yet you fear a "civil war," violence between believers and nonbelievers.

It doesn't have to be civil war. I think more and more Christians feel they have a role to play in the political process. There's an empowered sense of participation, and that's all to the good. It's my nightmare-scenario that the political process breaks down to such an extent that conflict breaking out does not seem to be ridiculous.

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