The Church Of The Comic Spirit: Including The Bear Lake Scrolls - Softcover

One evening Father Alazon Lecher appears on a popular talk show to announce that he has received a series of revelations. Several God-sent angels, he says, instructed him to find and translate a set of twelve scrolls, then choose four disciples to help him interpret these scriptures-the Bear Lake Scrolls-and establish the Church of the Comic Spirit. The Scrolls, the original versions of some famous Bible stories, form the centerpiece of this novel. Each of the twelve tales has a distinct plot, style, and characters, who are cast in the roles of rogues, buffoons, fools, and schlemiels. God is often the central character, though his role and traits change from story to story. The teachings of the church are set forth in a brief catechism consisting of answers to FAQs, e.g.: Whether God exists or whether someone has been posing as God? Whether irreverence is the highest virtue? Whether laughter is the way to salvation?

Paul Wiebe grew up in the Idaho outback. Very early he found that the life of irrigating spuds, driving trucks, repairing fences, digging ditches, and chasing mad steers across the open range was not to his liking. This discovery led him to the halls of higher education. Bethel College (Kansas) granted him a B.A.; the University of Chicago gave him a Ph.D. and sent him away to Wichita State University. There he taught literature and comparative religion and performed the tasks of his chosen profession-translating and writing books on the theory of religion, composing footnotes for journal articles, and arriving late at the meetings of those committees he could recall having been assigned to. But his mastery of the academic proprieties was never more than tenuous. Thus it came as no surprise to his colleagues and students when he resigned his tenured position and, in an attempt to recapture a vanishing sanity, took to writing comic novels. Wiebe lives in Colorado with his wife and pet mockingbird.