Salvation Boulevard (14 page)

But these new things did trouble him.

The third revelation was that the thing we had to fear was
the enemy within.

 

The Fourth Revelation:

After a year back home, working, he decided that he was not going to let the radicals and hippies, the atheists and Communists, the drug addicts and sexual deviants stop him from making something of himself. He went back to college. This time to USW. He majored in business. He liked it because it was about responsibility, rewards, and consequences. He minored in psychology but felt there was something wrong with the whole field.

Then he went to the University of Chicago to get an MBA in marketing.

At the university's world-famous school of economics, founded by John D. Rockefeller, they were reviving classical free market economics. It was a time of intense intellectual excitement, so much so that it was visceral, even missionary.

By contrast, there was an experiment in neosocialism right across the street from the university—vast public-housing projects where anyone could see firsthand the tragic results of the welfare state.

The inhabitants hadn't worked for their apartments and had no stake in them. So they broke the elevators and the windows, urinated and defecated in the hallways.

The young men joined youth gangs and dealt drugs. The young girls freely gave their virtue away. There were no consequences. They could get an abortion or get welfare money.

Families just disappeared. Nobody worked.

As Plowright saw it, under the guise of “helping the poor Negroes,” the liberals destroyed them.

What he had understood in an individual way as a boy shoe salesman, he now understood as a social issue. The lesson was clear. If there are no consequences, responsibility disappears.

 

The Fifth Revelation:

It was graduation day.

As he sat and waited to go up and receive his diploma, he suddenly saw that it was God who connected it all.

God had selected this new land, and He had given it freedom and democracy so that mankind would have an opportunity to make a fresh start.

Satan was determined to fight back. He was subtle, subtle as a serpent. He invented things like welfare that looked like they were helping poor people but actually destroyed them. He worked through so-called great thinkers, like Freud, who said morality was just repression, so adultery and homosexuality and even children having sex was downright healthy! Paul realized in a flash that “psychology” didn't work to really explain people because it didn't have God in it.

Then, the student sitting beside him nudged him. It was time for Paul to get up.

As he was walking toward the stage, he heard a voice.

It asked, “What are you going to do with this fine education? Will you serve something greater?”

He said, “I will serve you, Lord.”

The room became radiant. Paul felt His power and His love.

He kept going forward, unaware that he was doing so, not knowing how, his legs on puppet strings, until he found himself at the podium, the dean of the business school saying his name—he saw the man's lips move but couldn't hear him—and holding out the rolled parchment with the ribbon around it. And he was moved by that same master who had guided him there, not just his feet in those few minutes, but unseen through all the steps of his life, to brush past the dean and up to the microphone.

Then and there, impromptu and uninvited—very much uninvited—he gave his first sermon.

“The Lord is calling us to serve America,” he said, “against godless communism and the insidious destruction of morality and strength by the welfare state. Let us keep this country strong and great. Let us serve the Lord. For whatever we give to him, he will give back to us tenfold by His power and His bounty!”

His picture was on the cover.

His blue eyes looked straight out from his round face. Age had put a lot of white in his blonde hair, making it the color of a palomino's mane, and he wore it just a little bit long, his one physical vanity.

He explained to the reporter that as an assistant pastor to inner-city churches in Detroit and Baltimore, and then in suburban Houston,
he watched the country's geography change. “Real Americans were driven from the cities. By real Americans, I mean the people who believe in God and the flag, who make a commitment to their families, who take responsibility for themselves.” And, the magazine reported proudly, they moved especially to the Southwest. Which is why he came home to start his own church. He brought modern business methods and technology to his ministry, did market research, and developed a diversified product line and multiple revenue streams.

The occasion for the story was the last major election cycle. The governor's mansion, a senate seat, and both houses of the legislature were all up for grabs. The races were intense, bitter, and sometimes vicious. Campaign spending reached new highs. Negative campaigning reached new lows.

Everyone agreed that the outcome hung on the evangelical vote.

At the inaugural, Paul Plowright stood on the podium. He carried his own family Bible with him. When the time came, he passed it forward to the chief judge, and the governor elect placed his hand upon it as he took his oath of office.

The entire top floor of the tower was Plowright's.

Part of it was an apartment, a circle within the circle, set off center, with windows facing north. It had a view that overlooked the college, then past it to the far peaks.

That left a large crescent, wrapping around the south side from east to west, as office space. His private elevator arrived directly inside, in the center. The public elevator, the one that I came up in, arrived in a small lobby created by a wall that chopped off the eastern tip of the arc.

 

Paul Plowright was there waiting for me, holding the office door open.

He was smiling and friendly.

So, what did he want?

He clasped my hand. Paul's handshake is not some perfunctory up and down, quick as a nod. It is an embrace. It is also an act of domination, a friendly, paternal one, but still a way of establishing that he is setting the pace and the mood. “Welcome, Carl, my good friend. It's been too long since we've had a moment to spend together. I regret that. Too much to do,” he added by way of explanation.

The outer wall is a vast sweep of glass. The inner wall is faced with polished granite, hung with a gallery of photographs of Paul in the company of the important and powerful. One of the larger ones showed him with the governor at the inaugural.

The first third of his office is furnished like a living room, with a couch, armchairs, and a coffee table, all arranged for comfortable viewing of a sixty-one-inch LCD flat-screen TV.

His desk is further down, sitting grandly in the center. Past that, there's an area that looks like an ordinary office: two secretaries' desks, tall filing cabinets, a copy machine, and the rest. None of his assistants were there. I was being treated to a completely private interview.

He asked after Gwen and Angie. I asked after his wife, Shirley.

“Off to Washington, then on a tour of military bases, leading prayer vigils.” She travels a lot these days, practically a roving ambassador for the church. “We have to support the troops. The liberals and the Democrats and the media, they're undermining everything.”

With a cordial gesture, he indicated that I should sit on the couch. He settled himself into one of the armchairs. The screen had a live feed from outside that looked up toward where we sat. The sun and sky were reflected in the glass like a living painting. The hi-def made the video more vivid than reality.

“Coffee?” Paul asked. The low table was set for two, with cups and saucers, cream and sugar, small silver stirring spoons, and neatly folded napkins. There was also bottled water and a bowl of fruit. He picked up the thermos carafe. “From downstairs,” he said, meaning the Starbucks in the Cathedral's food court. I said that was fine, and he poured.

“I hear you had a run in with Jeremiah yesterday,” he said as he passed me the cup and saucer.

“Nothing very important.”

“I think of you and Angie and Gwen as part of the church family.” He sounded very paternal. Like a loving father-in-law.

Gwen works for CTM five hours a day.

Women with children can only work from eight until two. That's church policy. Family is what it's all about. There is no family if both parents are out rat-racing from seven to seven. When a child comes home from school, one of his or her parents should be there.

During the summer, Gwen also works with the Cathedral's Christian Adventure Camp, getting close to God through white-water rafting
and building moral character by trekking through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico.

Angie's been going on those trips since Gwen and I got together.

I nodded. Yes, we're part of the church family.

“I hate discord among my friends,” he said. He shook his head. “Jeremiah has a rough tongue. He
will
apologize to you . . . ” and before I could say anything, Paul assured me, “Oh, he'll mean it,” which he wouldn't. “He may not have liked your lawyer friend, but that's not a reason to be disrespectful, of him or you.”

“I appreciate it, but I can deal with Jerry myself.”

“I'm sure you can. I don't doubt it for a moment.” He leaned forward. “But I don't want you two to ‘deal' with each other.” He brought a verse to the situation, Matthew 5:23–24. “‘If you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled with your brother.' The answer is always in the Book.”

“Like I said, there wasn't that much to it. We can let bygones be bygones.”

“Good,” he said.

He picked up the remote that was on the table and pressed a button. The view on the screen changed.

We were looking down at Angie's school, Third Millennium Christian Academy. A phys ed class was out on the track. They looked very clean and wholesome.

Their motto is “Decidedly academic, distinctly Christian.”

They have real discipline. They don't let the girls come to school with their navels uncovered, pierced and glittering like Salome's, or wearing their pants so low below the curve of their bellies that they have to shave or depilate their pubic hair to keep it from curling over the top, clearly intent on letting everyone know it, so that teenage boys drool and middle-aged teachers get confused.

They don't let the boys come to school as baby gangstas, with their pants below the cracks in their asses, with weed, meth, coke, guns, or knives, or even with attitude.

Lockers and backpacks are always open to adult inspection.

They believe in corporeal punishment. Measured and restrained, but enough to make sure there's respect and obedience to the rules.

All well and good, but he was showing me things I knew. What was he trying to impress on me?

“Schools,” he said. “The center of secular power is in the schools. They grab our children in elementary school, and they teach them that the Bible is just another book, that Christianity is no different than Islam or godless Buddhism or witchcraft. They have posters on the wall that say it's good to be gay, but it's illegal to put up the Ten Commandments.

“That's why we built our own schools.”

He pressed the remote, and the view changed again to a wider shot. It was five miles to the interstate, and the Cathedral owned all the land in between. The area closest to the highway, spreading out around the schools, had been developed into a full suburban subdivision : single-family homes on quarter-, half-, and full-acre plots, garden apartments, assisted-living quarters, and elder-care housing, all on pleasant curving streets and attractive cul-de-sacs. There's a gas station and a convenience store.

“People want to live close to their schools. So close that their children can walk home.
If it's safe enough.
So we built a community around our schools. We made it safe. And people want to live there.”

That was true. If there weren't a four-year waiting list, we'd probably live there too. It would make Gwen and Angie happy. It's overpriced, unless you count the intangibles of living in a Christian community. But the price of any real estate is about intangibles.

“What you see is just the beginning. There will be more schools. A bigger community. And everything that a community needs. Stores, recreational facilities, a bank. As it grows, businesses will locate here. What better resource is there than a real Christian workforce?”

He switched to another camera, one to the north, that looked down on Cathedral College. It's fairly small, with seven hundred students and just five buildings, including two dormitories. It specializes in Bible studies, but also offers BA and BS degrees. It was recently accredited.