Klansman/Priest/Preacher

A Northern Virginia Catholic priest’s column this week revealing his conversion from Klansman to repentant Catholic and priest over 30 years ago reminded me of a similar story by someone I know. Thomas Tarrants was a young Klansman in the 1960s when arrested for trying to bomb a Mississippi Jewish businessman’s home after a spree of attacks targeting Jews and blacks. While in prison for 8 years he read the Bible, became a Christian and renounced his many hatreds. After release he sought to make amends with those he despised and became a pastor in Washington, D.C. Later he was president of the C.S. Lewis Institute in Northern Virginia.

About 15 years ago I invited Tom to speak at my church. Eyes were wide open as he shared from the pulpit about his past criminality, which included being shot 19 times in a shoot-out when caught by lawmen (his female cohort was killed) and later again defying death during a prison escape in which a fellow escapee was killed. He has spent the last 40 years renouncing his violent youth as a Klansman who admiringly read Mein Kampf, having found forgiveness and peace through another very different book. His message of dramatic conversion shared with my church and countless others has been a powerful witness to divine grace.

The same could be true for the Catholic priest. But the complication has been that apparently he only publicly shared his Klan background after a journalist contacted his diocese for comment about his criminal past, which included an arrest in the 1970s for burning a cross on the lawn of a suburban Maryland black couple. He served his jail time but never paid the $20,000 fine in a civil judgment. The victimized black couple told The Washington Post they’ve never heard an apology from the priest nor forgotten what they endured. The diocese says the priest will seek to rectify these failures.

This story is a reminder that Christian conversion stories are not always the neat straight line sometimes summarized in inspirational books or sermons. People are complicated and even after powerful transformations still live with their past and struggle to overcome with varying degrees of success.

This complexity was illustrated in another story this week from an impressive young Baptist pastor in Northern Virginia whom I’ve met. He’s previously publicly shared how as a college student he and a girlfriend aborted their unborn child. He later became a Christian and pastor but as a single man struggled with pornography, which he confided in a letter that spread within his congregation, requiring a series of agonizing public confessions and appeals for forgiveness. He’s now married and has helped revive a dying church near my home.

So there’s a seeming happy ending for that young pastor, and his testimony hopefully inspires others. But the story isn’t over and no doubt there are future struggles as there are for everybody. Divine grace is powerful, but the God whom Christians worship doesn’t promise anyone a life of ease.

May the former Klansman who became a Catholic priest rely on that grace as he moves hopefully forward in his vocation and makes amends for his past. His story, and the story of Tarrants, tell us that the final chapter maybe is not yet written for the several hundred young neo-Nazis and fellow travelers who marched in Charlottesville. Will some of them yield to divine grace and renounce their sinister beliefs in favor of new lives devoted to God and humanity? Are there any future preachers and priests among them who will repentantly proclaim forgiveness and reconciliation?

We can pray and hope so. Whether any of them yield or not, divine grace, unlike hate, is permanent and prevails cosmically and eternally against all obstacles.