aUTHOR Peter Faur JOINS THE SPIRITED BOOK CLUB TO DISCUSS his new novel, ‘The Heretic Hunters: A Parable for Our time’
When church becomes a blood sport, can even love survive?
Book Overview
When small-town pastor Otto Haller weaponizes the Bible and social media, he rises to power in the once-quiet, right-of-center Confessional Lutheran Church in America. His crusade for doctrinal purity using smear campaigns, power politics, and authoritarian governance fractures congregations, topples institutions, and threatens to unravel the very fabric of the denomination he claims to defend.
At Oberhausen University, theology professor Hillman Gehrke becomes Haller’s main target. He challenges the church’s descent into fundamentalism and authoritarianism and risks everything to preserve the spirit of inquiry and compassion. As the denomination spirals into chaos, Gehrke’s journey intersects with Haller’s wife, Martha, a woman seeking freedom from a marriage defined by control and silence. Together, they forge a path toward healing, justice, and love.
Spanning boardrooms, pulpits, classrooms, and quiet moments of grace, The Heretic Hunters is a parable for our time–an emotionally resonant novel that explores the tension between faith and ideology, tradition and transformation. With piercing insight and moral courage, it asks: What happens when pure doctrine becomes a weapon? And can love survive the wreckage of a church at war with itself?
eBooks available until Friday, December 12 @ $1.99 each!
Reviews for ‘The Heretic Hunters’
“Survivors of ecclesiastical warfare will recognize familiar character types, political strategies, and toxic scenarios in this story, all of which remind us that church people are as subject as anyone to the seduction of having control, acclaim, wealth, and the power to get rid of those with whom they disagree. Every church, and perhaps every institution and nation, has heretic hunters, and as this story discerns, the zealots among them generally prove themselves the most destructive heretics of all. The church’s true and only treasure is the gospel of Jesus Christ, not patriarchy, rectitude, or even orthodoxy.” —Frederick Niedner, Senior Research Professor in Theology, Valparaiso University
“As a former politician, I witnessed firsthand how certain politicians used the word of Christ to justify inevitably un-Christian ideas and ideals. I wondered, “How did those politicians get to such inaccurate dogma?” Reading Peter Faur’s The Heretic Hunters, I can now see how they got there. The Heretic Hunters is, as the subtitle reads, a parable for our time. At times heartbreaking, at times frustrating, The Heretic Hunters also shows that love can and will trump hate. A must-read for anyone trying to make sense of the times we are in.” —Lorenzo Sierra, Former Arizona State Representative, Author, Fight Like Hell: Love, Politics, and the Will to Live
“The Heretic Hunters gets at the raw edge of faith-what happens when belief curdles into fear, when doctrine is turned into a weapon. But what stays is the quiet instinct of love and how it can still survive the noise of institutions obsessed with control. It’s about what happens when a person must choose between trusting what they’ve been told is infallible and trusting what their inner self knows to be true.” —David Martinez, Author, Bones Worth Breaking
“While the Christian community confesses that is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, it has experienced numerous ecclesiastical conflicts and consequent interdenominational and intradenominational divisions. This fictional account is reminiscent of a major conflict within a North American Lutheran church body during the mid-twentieth century.
“The personalities of the main characters, the theological debates, the quest for ecclesiastical political power, the passion for what is perceived as truth, the diverse interpretations of Scripture, the family and communal dynamics, and the broken relationships that result from conflict are explored expertly, realistically, and believably in the storyline. The paradoxical nature of the church, whose members are simultaneously saints and sinners, thus becomes readily apparent. The novel will capture the attention of its readers and will remind them of the multifaceted and complex dynamic that is operative in human relationships within the church and beyond. Thus, the story actually serves as a “parable” for any time.”—Kurt K. Hendel, Bernard, Fischer, Westberg Distinguished Ministry Professor Emeritus of Reformation History, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
CLUB DISCUSSION date
BOOK CLUB meets Thursday, January 15 @ 3:00 – 4:00 pm AZ (MST), 2:00 PST
++Book discussion facilitated by Sheri Brown
About the author
Peter Faur, a native St. Louisan, was the religion editor of The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, where he worked from 1977 to 1982. He spent most of his career in public relations, working in telecommunications, chemical manufacturing, brewing, and copper mining. His work won several Gold Quills from the International Association of Business Communicators and a Silver Anvil from the Public Relations Society of America.
Faur holds a bachelor of arts degree in education with minors in theology and psychology from Concordia University, Chicago; a master’s degree in journalism from Kansas State University; and master’s degrees in business administration and management from Fontbonne University in St. Louis. Faur currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his spouse, Pat.
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