from the Watchtower to New Life
Pathways to Freedom offers a helping hand to former Jehovah’s Witnesses who can too easily become stuck in the transit zone between the Watchtower and new life. How do you let go of the baggage which weighs you down all along the way? How do you start to make new friends when you always had it drummed into you that you could trust nobody outside of the Witnesses? How do you stop the constantly nagging doubts about whether you did the right thing to break free? Pathways to Freedom is here to help.
Leaving Gilead is a novel which tells the story of two women breaking free of the Fellowship of Gilead, a distinctly JW-like religious movement. Susan and Melanie are members of the same family, a generation apart, who never knew each other until Melanie sets out in search of her missing abusive father.
Shadows of Gilead revisits the world of the Fellowship of Gilead with a darker story of three very different defectors from the same congregation of that repressive religion, who are trying to discover the truth of what was was going on when they were kids.
Solomon’s Magpie is the story of a forgotten family legend first told by Solomon Whitaker, boatman, basket-maker and brewer. Solomon heard the tale from his mother and he went to the trouble of learning to read and write to the he could set it down. Generation later, fifteen-year-old Judy must try to create a readable version of the story. But there’s a problem – a large portion of it is missing and it is clearly the most important bit. Supported by her unlikely friendships with Twirl and Tracey, Judy fills in the gaps herself. Nobody believes her, however, because she is a compulsive spinner of yarns and teller of tall tales. Nobody will be sure of what really happened unless the missing pages are found – and with them Solomon’s magpie.
Bunderlin is the story of an odd-ball character who lives his life by his own rules and plays havoc in the lives of other people, who cannot seem to disentangle themselves from him. Bunderlin may be a criminal, a murderer even, but Martin isn’t sure…Bunderlin, Bundy, Bird, The Big Man—even his name becomes wordplay. An irresistible force in the lives of the people he decides will be his friends. Bunderlin is infuriating, charming and often plain rude. He enters Martin’s life in a sinister way—Martin is being followed, he receives photographs anonymously, he is suddenly thrown from his comfortable life in academia into the social world of hookers, petty criminals and even murderers. But could Bunderlin, a man obsessed with kindness to animals, in fact be a murderer himself? Idiosyncratic use of language is a hallmark of Bunderlin’s character, and also of this novel. This is a story full of characters who defy stereotype and worm their way into your affections.
A novelist’s approach to the Bible
Stories in the Scriptures offers a way of reading familiar texts from a fresh perspective. Robert Crompton comes to the ancient narratives in the role of a story-teller and asks, not, “What must we believe?” but, “What real situations might have prompted people just like ourselves to tell these tales?”
In trying to find possible answers to questions of this sort, we are drawn closer to the people behind the stories. Ordinary people who really are just like ourselves, who loved to tell their tales – to inform, to entertain, and maybe sometimes even to mislead. Real people to whom we can relate and who can inspire us to tell our own stories.
Stories in the Scriptures tells the story of my involvement with the Bible over many years from early childhood to retirement and beyond. Also it offers what will be of interest to people who, having defected from very authoritarian versions of Christian belief, nevertheless wish to continue some engagement with biblical and religious issues. There will be some who simply want to lay to rest various lingering problems of belief which may persist long after defection. Others may be seeking a new religious fellowship but are wary of coming under pressure to assent to any rigid doctrinal package. Yet others just find the topics fascinating and wish to find out what someone else might think. Wherever you are along this spectrum, Stories in the Scriptures is for you.
Counting the Days to Armageddon
Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Second Presence of Christ
Counting the Days to Armageddon is a book for serious students of Christianity’s sectarian fringe. It traces the development of the Watchtower movement’s prophetic speculations from their origins within the mainstream Protestantism of the19th century at a time when their predictions may have appeared quite plausible. It follows the revisions brought into account for failed hopes and reaches the point where we must ask, If this was the Watchtower’s first century, what can we expect for its second?
Tales from the Snig's Foot 