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Peter Faur's Blog - Posts Tagged "parable"
Why I Wrote The Heretic Hunters
I’ve always believed the most treacherous battles aren’t fought only with weapons. They’re waged with words, with rigid doctrine, and with the aggressors’ arrogant belief in their absolute righteousness. The Heretic Hunters (available October 19, 2025) is my attempt to tell one such story.
It’s a novel about politics dressed in church vestments, about power masquerading as purity, and about the quiet courage of those who refuse to play along.
Even as a young boy, before I knew who the notorious Joe McCarthy was, I understood the strategies and tactics of people like him. I saw them play out not in history books, but in black-and-white morality tales on my television screen. Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone was my first education in authoritarian psychology.
In the episode Four O’Clock, Theodore Bikel plays Oliver Crangle, a fanatic convinced that he can rid the world of evil by asking God to shrink every “bad” person to two feet tall. He keeps obsessive records, harasses strangers, and believes he’s on a divine mission. At four p.m., his plan works — but not as he intended. Let’s just say he had to start looking up at people he had been looking down on.
In The Obsolete Man, Burgess Meredith plays Romney Wordsworth, a librarian condemned to death by a totalitarian regime for being “obsolete.” After all, people didn’t need libraries anymore. The state would tell them anything they needed to know. Wordsworth’s quiet defiance exposes the hollowness of the state’s authority and affirms the dignity of moral courage in the face of annihilation.
These stories helped me realize that authoritarianism doesn’t always wear a uniform. Sometimes it wears a clerical collar.
I am a product of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, attending its schools through grade school, high school, and college. Only when I went to graduate school in journalism at Kansas State in 1973 did I study outside the system.
During my senior year of college and beyond, the synod began its pursuit of so-called “teachers of false doctrine.” I recognized the pattern of smear tactics, power politics, and authoritarian governance Rod Serling had illuminated. Professors at synodical colleges, most notably Concordia Seminary in St. Louis but elsewhere as well, were accused of undermining the Bible because they used historical-critical methods to study scripture. The forums they were given to respond were convened by their accusers and were far from impartial.
The controversy escalated until the seminary president, John Tietjen, was suspended. Most of the faculty and students walked out, forming a new institution in exile — Seminex. In retrospect, I believe each suspected faculty member should have stayed and forced upwards of fifty separate heresy trials, but that reckoning is long behind us.
I knew some of the people who were targeted. They were among the most thoughtful, compassionate, and faithful individuals I’d ever met. Whatever theological disagreements existed, they didn’t deserve the treatment they got. The whole episode opened my eyes to how easily institutions can sacrifice conscience for control.
Today, as the United States flirts with authoritarianism once again, I felt compelled to revisit this story. Not as a history lesson, but as a parable and a warning. The Heretic Hunters is fiction, but it’s rooted in truth — the kind of truth that Serling understood and fought for.
This novel is for anyone who’s ever been called unloyal for asking hard questions. It’s for those who believe that a strong ethical foundation, not short-term, self-interested transactions, should guide our institutions. And it’s for readers who know that the real battle is not between right and left, but between right and wrong.
If this story resonates with you — if you’ve ever watched institutions sacrifice decency for control, or seen good people branded as heretics for asking hard questions — I invite you to read The Heretic Hunters. Because sometimes fiction is the only way to tell the truth.
It’s available now for preorder at major online book retailers. The book will be released in both print and e-book editions. You can download a free excerpt. And if you’d like, go to the Ash & Creed Press website to sign up for updates about The Heretic Hunters and future releases as well.
It’s a novel about politics dressed in church vestments, about power masquerading as purity, and about the quiet courage of those who refuse to play along.
Even as a young boy, before I knew who the notorious Joe McCarthy was, I understood the strategies and tactics of people like him. I saw them play out not in history books, but in black-and-white morality tales on my television screen. Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone was my first education in authoritarian psychology.
In the episode Four O’Clock, Theodore Bikel plays Oliver Crangle, a fanatic convinced that he can rid the world of evil by asking God to shrink every “bad” person to two feet tall. He keeps obsessive records, harasses strangers, and believes he’s on a divine mission. At four p.m., his plan works — but not as he intended. Let’s just say he had to start looking up at people he had been looking down on.
In The Obsolete Man, Burgess Meredith plays Romney Wordsworth, a librarian condemned to death by a totalitarian regime for being “obsolete.” After all, people didn’t need libraries anymore. The state would tell them anything they needed to know. Wordsworth’s quiet defiance exposes the hollowness of the state’s authority and affirms the dignity of moral courage in the face of annihilation.
These stories helped me realize that authoritarianism doesn’t always wear a uniform. Sometimes it wears a clerical collar.
I am a product of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, attending its schools through grade school, high school, and college. Only when I went to graduate school in journalism at Kansas State in 1973 did I study outside the system.
During my senior year of college and beyond, the synod began its pursuit of so-called “teachers of false doctrine.” I recognized the pattern of smear tactics, power politics, and authoritarian governance Rod Serling had illuminated. Professors at synodical colleges, most notably Concordia Seminary in St. Louis but elsewhere as well, were accused of undermining the Bible because they used historical-critical methods to study scripture. The forums they were given to respond were convened by their accusers and were far from impartial.
The controversy escalated until the seminary president, John Tietjen, was suspended. Most of the faculty and students walked out, forming a new institution in exile — Seminex. In retrospect, I believe each suspected faculty member should have stayed and forced upwards of fifty separate heresy trials, but that reckoning is long behind us.
I knew some of the people who were targeted. They were among the most thoughtful, compassionate, and faithful individuals I’d ever met. Whatever theological disagreements existed, they didn’t deserve the treatment they got. The whole episode opened my eyes to how easily institutions can sacrifice conscience for control.
Today, as the United States flirts with authoritarianism once again, I felt compelled to revisit this story. Not as a history lesson, but as a parable and a warning. The Heretic Hunters is fiction, but it’s rooted in truth — the kind of truth that Serling understood and fought for.
This novel is for anyone who’s ever been called unloyal for asking hard questions. It’s for those who believe that a strong ethical foundation, not short-term, self-interested transactions, should guide our institutions. And it’s for readers who know that the real battle is not between right and left, but between right and wrong.
If this story resonates with you — if you’ve ever watched institutions sacrifice decency for control, or seen good people branded as heretics for asking hard questions — I invite you to read The Heretic Hunters. Because sometimes fiction is the only way to tell the truth.
It’s available now for preorder at major online book retailers. The book will be released in both print and e-book editions. You can download a free excerpt. And if you’d like, go to the Ash & Creed Press website to sign up for updates about The Heretic Hunters and future releases as well.
