The product of a violent home, John Christian Hillcox overcomes long odds to build a Texas megachurch where he preaches the gospels of prosperity and End Times, and pulls the political strings of a key voting bloc. A man of enormous appetites and inadequate self-control, Pastor Hillcox rallies his flock to oppose everything he considers immoral and detrimental to the United States being a godly, Christian nation. Being Christian is a gripping psychological tale of a man who uses religion to justify his own sins and lies, heedless of the consequences for his loved ones, his community, and the world at large. The story of this larger-than-life, but familiar, character follows him from his crime-ridden early adulthood to the prime of his ministry in post-9/11 America. Not since Elmer Gantry has a novel so exposed the religious flim-flammery and hypocrisy that threaten to tear apart the American social and political fabric. Being Christian is a quintessentially American story, based on the ideologies and personalities that make the news every day with their challenges to the Constitutional religious/political divide.
K. C. BOYD GREW UP IN OHIO, unaware, for the most part, of the vast array of religions and religious practices that have marked humankind. While earning a BA in psychology in Louisiana, Boyd became aware of the growing number of radical right-wing Christians who were quietly hoping for the world to end so that Jesus Christ would return.
When the 2004 election demonstrated that this extreme Christian worldview had found acceptance in right-wing politics, Boyd began a strange and often frightening period of exploration by attending far-right evangelical services and conferences throughout the United States. Concerned about the increasing danger of mixing politics with end-times Christianity, Boyd realized the time had come to expose this reality through the medium of fiction. The result, born of close observation of key personalities, is Being Christian.
