Father of Lies – A Disturbing and Explosive Critique on the Hypocrisy of Organized Religion

“Hell is crammed full of godly men.”

The unrelentingly dark Father of Lies (originally published in 1998) was Brian Evenson’s first novel. Raised as a devout Mormon, who was at one point even a member of the high priesthood of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Evenson’s bizarre collection of short stories Altmann’s Tongue (published in 1994) already caused some buzz among the church officials. The then 27-year-old Evenson was teaching at Brigham Young University’s English department (a Mormon-run university). A letter from an anonymous student, harshly criticizing Altmann’s Tongue, which also addressed fears about a teacher conjuring such ‘horrific’ mental imagery, caught him in the middle of a controversy. The administrators tried to quell Evenson’s desire for writing such horror fiction, but after receiving NEA Creative Writer's Fellowship he chose to leave the university. He began writing Father of Lies, a loud and sharp critique on organized religion that demands blind obedience over morality.

Father of Lies tells the story of Eldon Fochs, a Provost in the Corporation of the Blood of the Lamb, also known as “Bloodites.” He is happily married with four children and helps youngsters of the church to not stray from the ‘right’ path. Lately Fochs has had bad dreams and disturbing thoughts. The church elder recommends Fochs to visit a Bloodite psychiatrist named Alexander Feshtig. Fochs recounts his dreams, which involves pederasty and killing a young girl belonging to his church. At some point, Fochs stops visitng Feshtig. But the psychiatrist listening to his tapes and re-reading the notes believes that these aren’t just accounts of a dream. Moreover, two mothers of Bloodite church publicly accuse Fochs of raping their underage sons. Feshtig also discovers about the murder and sexual assault of a young girl in Fochs' neighborhood.

But the provost cunningly manipulates the church leadership so as to intimidate and even excommunicate the women who brought the charges against him. Meanwhile, Feshtig is ordered by the church authorities to hand over his notes and tapes on Fochs. Feshtig’s persecution clearly stands as a parallel to the incidents following controversy over Altmann’s Tongue. The novel chiefly unfolds from the spiritually bankrupt perspective of Provost Fochs. This is further complicated by the appearance of a demonic ‘Bloody-Headed’ man and an angelic ‘doctor’, who in Fochs’ mind are contending to control his soul. Despite such jaunts into surrealistic territory, Evenson’s taut, unflowery prose elicits great anger against the corrupted, secretive cesspool of a religious institution.

Brian Evenson doesn’t write the sort of horror literature that allows readers to go on a grimly fascinating journey, filled with ghosts or other deadly mysterious forces. The horrors in Evenson’s stories are palpably real, subterranean, and there’s no escape from his atmosphere of lingering fear. I read the book, confined to my room, in a single sitting. And immediately after finishing it I went for a long walk to try and gradually reduce the fury and pain drifting in my consciousness. Father of Lies, although not the most acute and subtle among Evenson’s writings, paints the portrait of personal and collective evil which echoes disturbing similarities to the contemporary religious authoritarianism.

The novel is a result of Evenson speaking to therapists and individuals who had suffered from abuse within the Church system. Hence the novel seethes with raw rage which mostly provides a two-dimensional, stereotypical portrait of certain characters. The author has made the same point about blind loyalty within religious sect to a subtler effect in his later works like ‘Open Curtain’ and ‘Last Days’. Nevertheless, Father of Lies is a disturbing and strange psychological horror on the utterly damned and corrupted religious organizations.