The Sean McDowell Show - From Klansman Terrorist to Christ

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

As an ordinary high school student in the 1960s in Alabama, Tom Tarrants became deeply unsettled by the social upheaval and turned to extremist ideology. While attempting to bomb the home of a Jewish leader in Mississippi, Tom was ambushed by law enforcement and shot multiple times during a high-speed chase. After escaping from prison and being caught, he then had a crushing experience of the weight of his sin and became a Christian while in solitary confinement. Now he's a co-pastor of a racially mixed church and became the president of the C. S. Lewis Institute, where he devoted himself to helping others become wholehearted followers of Jesus. Please check out and share his amazing story. READ: Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love: How a Violent Klansman Became a Champion of Racial Reconciliation by Tom Tarrants (https://amzn.to/3AozyLw) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

How did an ordinary high school student become radicalized into extremist ideology and join the reign of terror spread by Mississippi's dreaded white knights of the Ku Klux Klan? After being shot and arrested from attempting to bomb the home of a Jewish leader, how did he then escape from prison? And ultimately, how was this radical transformed by Christ went back in prison to become a champion of racial reconciliation. Our guest today, Dr. Tom Terrence, is the author of the book Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love. The cover by John Grisham says, a remarkable memoir, riveting. Tom, in my estimation, that is an understatement. Loved your book. And I've been looking forward all summer to having you on. Thanks for joining me. Well, thank you, Sean. It's just a pleasure and a privilege to be with you today.

Well, let's jump right into your story where you start the book. And let me tell you, you had me on the first line. You open your book with you as a representative of the Ku Klux Klan attempting to carry out the bombing of the home of a Jewish leader. Now, before we get to your backstory and how you became radicalized, bring us to that fateful day that changed everything for you. Well, we had, several of us had decided that this Jewish business leader in Meridian, Mississippi, who had been publicly criticizing and condemning the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi needed to be taught a lesson, so to speak.

And so the plan emerged to bomb his home and so two of us myself and a young school teacher from jackson mississippi kathy ainsworth Went late one night to deliver this bomb to his house, 29 sticks of dynamite. And we arrived there, I guess, about 1 o'clock in the morning to leave the bomb and had a timing device on it and we expected to be on our way to another location. No trouble at all. We assumed it would be just a very simple, easy thing to do. It didn't turn out that way. It turns out that the FBI had been working with some of the people in the Klan in Meridian and had learned of our plans and alerted the local police. And they had a SWAT team. They weren't using that language back in those days. That was 1968. But 26 men dressed in black, heavily armed, hidden hidden behind trees and bushes. The place was staked out. And so we pulled up in front of this house and I got out of the car and was taking this bomb to put it on the carport of the house and about halfway up the driveway, it's a concrete driveway, shots rang out and I was just stunned. I didn't know what to think. I dropped the bomb and spun around and headed back to the car. Now, that's the first miracle in this whole saga

because the bomb didn't detonate. It should have. Bomb disposal people afterwards couldn't figure out why it didn't. Well, I think I know the answer to that. I got back to the car and I was hit with a load of double-op buckshot in my right leg and hobbled my way to the door at driver's side and got in. But shots were coming from everywhere and car was the focal point and bullets singing here and there.

And I was able to get in and start the car and speed away. And Kathy, who was in the passenger seat, was hit with one round of rifle fire in the midst of all that. She told me as I was speeding away, she said she'd been hit. It was, things were going so fast. I couldn't really do anything except just try to get away as quickly as possible. A police car had immediately appeared behind bumper and the guy in the passenger side was blasting

away with a shotgun and they chased me for about 15 blocks I think it was and turning corners going here and there trying to escape evade but finally i lost it going around a corner and they were so close they crashed into the rear of my car well i was just moving on adrenaline at that point, gushing a lot of blood. Yeah. I got out of the car. I had a submachine gun on the front seat, hand grenade, and I just opened fire on the police car. And the driver, he saw what was coming and he ducked. And the other guy that had the shotgun was about halfway out of the car. And he was hit with three rounds of 9mm fire, one in the heart. Well, the driver then, when my clip emptied, I just dropped the gun there in the street.

And the driver then popped up in open fire and I was hit again. But I guess he went to look after his partner and he didn't do anything more to me and I stumbled away and collapsed behind the house right there at that intersection. I guess the second miracle, and I'm very hesitant to use the word miracle because overworked quite a bit i agree christian world but this guy this officer that had

these three bullets in his chest one of them his heart. Somehow the 9-1-1 people were able to get his heart beating again. And he was actually flown to Emory University Hospital and had open heart surgery and got out of the hospital before I did. It's just absolutely unbelievable. If he had died, I wouldn't be here talking with you. I can guarantee you that. But meanwhile, police converged on the area, FBI, state troopers looking for me, where had I gone, and shining lights all around. This little small group of local police officers, four of them saw me collapsed in the backyard of this house and came up very slowly, carefully, and turned their lights off

and opened fire with the shotguns. And I was, oh, I guess it was probably the range was about three feet or four feet away. And I was hit breathing. One filled out his pistol to finish me off. And precisely that moment, an ambulance driver came running up because he'd heard the shooting. And so they couldn't do that and had to load me on a stretcher and take me to the hospital. So when I got there, they examined me and said, if you live 45 minutes, it'll be a miracle. Oh, my goodness. So I'd lost a lot of blood and had a lot of bullet holes.

So miracle was their word. They took me into surgery. Nobody thought I'd come out breathing. But God spared my life. That was the only explanation. gain more strength and recover a little bit. And I spent, I think, a little over a month in the hospital, had surgeries and that sort of thing. Lots of pain. The wages of sin are pretty high. And it was a really, really hard time. But eventually I got to the point jail and I was I spent probably what from I spent July up in about the middle of December

in a special isolated area. Had a trial. It took, I think, two hours for the jury to return a verdict of guilty. The prosecutor was wanting the death penalty. Nobody had died, but bombing in Mississippi is a capital offense. But the judge, for some reason, decided to sentence me to 30 years in the state penitentiary, a place called Parchman. And that was considered to be one of the worst prisons in the United States at that point. Before we go to your experience in prison, let's take a step back to how you became radicalized in the first place, if we may. So what was your family like growing up in the 50s in the south well I grew up in Mobile Alabama and it was a very conservative traditional southern city Mobile was founded in 1702 and it had been segregated from that point until the 1960s.

So that's all I knew, and that's all anybody knew. People today can't relate to this, but when you went into a public building, for example, you had restrooms that were marked white and colored, different facilities based on race, water fountains. Residential arrangements were the same. You had a black section of town and then the white part of town, and black people didn't dare come live anywhere around where white people were. Schools were all segregated it was just two totally different cultures living side by side and so it came as a great shock

and shock and provocation, I suppose is a good word, when federal courts ordered desegregation in the public schools. And that aroused a great deal of anger in the political realm. And we had a governor there in Alabama named George Wallace. George Wallace protested all of this. He said it's an unwarranted invasion

by the federal government and a trampling upon states' rights. Jed Macosko Wow. Dr. Stephen Bryen And furthermore, that this whole thing of civil rights movement and desegregation was actually a communist conspiracy. And so he took the step of standing in the doorway of the University of Alabama when black students were attempting to enroll to block their entry and he had beside him the commanding general of the Alabama National Guard. And all this was televised. And

a senior, well, an assistant attorney general from Department of Justice was there to serve notice on him that he had to step aside. Nicholas Katzenbach was his name, and he refused. So Katzenbach called JFK, and JFK federalized the National Guard so that the generals standing there had instantly been put under the control of the federal government, no longer under the control of the state of Alabama or the governor of Alabama. But that type of thing, this kind of highly dramatic media type stuff. It stirred up things all over the state, inflamed people. People began to think of themselves

as being under attack by the government. And that was the situation that I was in when I went to school, very large campus, 2,000 students, and was surrounded by national, federalized National Guard troops. And U.S. Marshals brought these girls into the school, two girls, two black girls. There was a lot of upset about that and a lot of, well, I guess flyers and leaflets and stuff like that, protesting, that had been distributed by some people that were quite extreme on the issue. And I read that kind of material. I met the people who were distributing it

and I became interested in knowing more. And, of course, they were all too happy to take me aside and let me know all the details. Well, we're going to jump into some of the details about how that radicalization began. One more question about your childhood. Did you go to church? Was that segregated? Were racist ideas preached from the church or just ignored? My family went to what would have been considered a mega church.

That language wasn't used back in those days, but it was a very large Southern Baptist church. And they preached the Bible as Southern Baptist churches do. And my mother thought it was really important for us to be there every Sunday. And so she took us and sometimes sent us when she didn't go herself.

So we were in Sunday school and main services regularly. The church, like all the churches, the church was segregated. I heard from somebody at some point that some Black people were going to come visit the church and I called the church just furious about it but yeah I heard a lot of truth but none of it really penetrated my mind or heart. I mean, I could tell you Jesus died for my sins.

And in fact, when I was about 13 years old, I made a profession of faith, which was a pretty typical thing in the Bible belt. And some people did make genuine professions of faith and were born again, but not by any stretch of the imagination, everybody. And so I was one of those who made a profession of faith and I was duly baptized. But what I subsequently learned is that no amount of water will make you a Christian. I went down as a lost person and came back up a lost person, but I was now proclaimed a believer and put on the church rolls. So I thought I was a Christian. I didn't know what a real Christian was.

I never heard anything about discipleship. So there I was. I thought I had checked the box and I was going to go to heaven when I died. And I didn't have any idea that there was anything more required. So you thought you're a Christian at this point, growing up in the 50s and the 60s in Mississippi. What was your view? Alabama.

Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, in Alabama. That's where you grew up. Okay. Thank you. What was your view of America? Did you love America? Did you fend America? Did you view like America was under threat by

communists and the Jews and by segregation like how did you view this at that time well I was very patriotic like most people in the South and many still are um I just grew up in that kind of world. We had a large Air Force base there in Mobile. My cousin was in the Marine Corps, fought in Korea, and had a high respect for the military. Back in those days, there was a great fear of communism. And that was something that got to me too. We had the Cuban Missile, that really disturbed a lot of people, myself included, because we were really not very far from Cuba, just a hop over the Gulf of Mexico.

So you had that, and then J. Edgar Hoover had written about this and talked a lot about the threat of communism and had written a book. I think the title was Masters of Deceit. I read his stuff. I thought he was a great threat, concern, then we have to take that very seriously. So that fed into it. But it was all in the part of the culture in those days. So I guess kind of summing up, this was a kind of a, the situation was kind of a populist uprising in a section of America. People were concerned all over the country, but particularly in the southeast, like Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, some in North Carolina, Tennessee. But those were maybe the more intense areas where it was very much a swirling vortex, a swirling vortex of cultural, social, racial upheaval, really.

And what I found is that that disorients people. And I was one of them. I got got very disoriented it's kind of like your head spinning you know what in the world is going on and i was a teenager and i really didn't have the maturity to sort a lot of this stuff out and i went with the influences that were there in my culture in my life my parents were not uh racist and and kind of a conventional sense of the word they they didn't hate black people we had a maid who was a a black woman and we just loved her like, you know, part of the family. My dad had black guys working for him. So, I mean, we were not taught that, you know,

these are bad people or anything. But having said that, and that would be true for a lot of people in the South, it was just assumed that blacks were inferior to white people. For example, I never knew any black person who had a college degree or was in a position of any kind of significant leadership anywhere. All that I knew were in subservient positions. So, you know, it was a time that brought a great deal of unsettlement in society and not just in the lower echelons, but up to the higher echelons of society, too. It spanned the whole thing. It's hard for people to grasp, I think, now what it was like back then. But having said that, we are in the midst of now a national populist uprising that has many of the same characteristics that I experienced back in this in the 60s and now saying the same kinds of things

develop now we're gonna come to that I am so eager to hear your assessment but I want to work through a little bit of your story first to see the transformation that you've come through but What role, when I picked up your book, I thought for somebody to be radicalized by this, so often there's a broken or distant relationship with a father. So I'm reading it and I'm like, it popped up. Tell us a little bit about your father and what role that made you think to at least make you susceptible to some of these radical ideas that we'll get to? That's a great question, Sean. Definitely. I was very angry at my father. And we had a really difficult relationship.

And it wasn't always that way, but in the teen years it became that way. So everything was fine with my mother and there weren't any problems there. But that, interestingly, as I've observed over the years, that's not an uncommon thing with people who are radicalized. They are alienated from those who normally would be closest to them and give them wise guidance and counsel in dealing with the various challenges

and issues of life as they're growing. And then they become more vulnerable to other influences that will fill that void. And it's true for me. There at school, when I ran into these people, what I described earlier, there were older people who were the instigators of a lot of this.

And so they took an interest in educating me, so to speak. And I was kind of a sitting duck for that. You know, when you look back at some of these terrible massacres, race-related type things that we've seen over, well, the last 10 years at least, you'll notice that most of the time they are young men in their teens or early 20s. And you look back and you see there are problems in the family. And it's just such a crucial thing. A family structure is so vital to help people as they are growing up and learning about life and facing all the challenges

that come one's way and especially in the culture we live in today you need a mother and a father that are engaged in the life of the child and can help them make sense of all this stuff and not be vulnerable to alternative explanations, shall we say. Sure, sure. Ideologies that are everywhere. And in fact, today it's even more challenging than it was in my time, because back in those days I described, I became aware of this sort of thing through flyers distributed around, laid out around various places on the campus. Today, it's on the Internet. That's right. It's everywhere. And it's not just America.

It's all over. This kind of racist, anti-Semitic mentality is growing, and it's very strong in Europe. And, well, we've seen in the last few days, examples in England. And these are connected, the American and the European are connected. And then there are other influences as well that feed into that. There's an influence from Islamic extremists that love to see this sort of stuff and want to help

it to flourish. But anyway. Yeah, I think you're right about that. When you look at school shootings and the kind of radicalization, so often there's a disconnect relationally and many times with the father. So I love that you brought that out in your book, and we're willing to share that. Let me ask you a question you ask in your book. You're referring to Kathy who went with you that night that we talked about at the beginning, about dropping off that bomb at the home of a Jewish man who was resistant to the Klan.

You said, how could such a kind, genteel school teacher also be a secret terrorist? I want to ask that of you. Who are some of the other key people or key experiences you had that pushed you over the edge where you were able to say, I'm in support of Mississippi's dreaded white knights of the Ku Klux Klan and literally willing to die for that cause. Well, it goes back to these people that I first met there at high school, the ones behind the distribution of these leaflets and whatnot,

and then reading this material, becoming more and more indoctrinated. It's a progression, you know, you start small, but it was the influence of those people and others that I met through them that had the same ideas. And so it became a kind of community. You see, we all need community. And so it became an alternative community and reinforced. All of these people were teaching this type of stuff and reinforcing these ideas in my mind.

And so that was a crucial part of it. It was the same story with Kathy Ainsworth. People that actually, some of the people that influenced me influenced her as well. Okay. And she had the problem with her father was not present in her life, just her mother.

So when you start digging a little bit, you find some interesting common background features in these stories. Okay. So let's go back to you're in prison and you escape somehow and then come back. But I guess before we get to the second part where i think it was like three years you're in solitary confinement judge's sentence goes down you're in that prison prison door closes how did you respond did that start to make you rethink your beliefs what happened when that cell closed and you believed you were going to be there for 30 years

well believe you were going to be there for 30 years? Well, I suppose the best way to answer that is to say that I didn't have any expectation of being there for 30 years or any intention of being there for 30 years. My intention was to escape and go back to what I'd been doing. My mentality, you may have heard of this guy, this author, Eric Hoffer. Eric Hoffer wrote a book called The True Believer. It's a quite highly acclaimed book.

It's been around for a number of years where he describes extremist groups and how people get into that sort of thing. So, boy, that really nailed me. I was totally committed to this ideology. And maybe just a comment here, the mentality that I had that was fostered among the people that I was being influenced by was that America is at a crisis point, it's an existential threat to America,

to the Constitution and to white Christian civilization. That's how it was framed. That was kind of the larger narrative. And as we alluded to just a little earlier, the threat came from, well, the civil rights movement was kind of the point of the spear, but behind that was the communist, what was called the communist Jewish conspiracy.

And the Jews were behind the communists. And so the Jews were the ultimate culprits and of course lots of stuff presented to support that taken out of context but that's the idea that we're at this moment this decisive moment in the life of our nation. And we have information that the

communists have penetrated the government, the whole Alger Hiss thing and the communist communist agent that had been discovered in the State Department, and our nuclear secrets being given to the Russians and by spies and that sort of thing. There was a lot of this was brought together to paint a picture of just how desperate things were and how urgent it was to take action. And those of us who were under this influence looked around and said, people are asleep.

Gotcha. They're asleep. We've got to act. We've got to get engaged. We've got to desperate times call for desperate measures. That was the mentality. And so, yeah, it was everything. We called ourselves patriots.

Fighting for God and country. Very much that kind of mentality. And so, you know, I took that seriously. And it meant that you did another part of the story here that feeds into it, in the 50s, that was the era of television breaking into the American world and the family and whatnot, filled with World War II movies. I watched World War II movies all the time, along with Westerns and stuff like that. I had this mentality kind of baked in. You fight for your country and you give your life if necessary. Now this sounds all crazy, I know, but that was the way it was in that era. And that has had a profound impact on me as a teenager.

Well, what does a combatant do when captured by the enemy? Their first responsibility is to try to escape and return to their unit. Wow. That was how I thought. Makes sense. It makes sense. It makes sense if you're a soldier. Yeah, given the worldview. Within this worldview, it was coherent. And I should make the comment, I mean, basically what had happened to me is that I had been seduced by a different worldview than I grew up with.

This whole conspiratorial theory of history and all the values that go with it is a very different worldview. And as you may recall from one of our celebrated forebears, how did he put it? I think he said, thoughts matter. What you think makes a difference. Amen to that. yeah and to be kind of verbatim ideas have consequences that's right and if you don't believe that you're asleep at the switch doesn't matter what your beliefs are all beliefs have consequences and the set of beliefs I took on had consequences.

Good ideas have good consequences. Bad ideas can have terrible consequences. And I was on that path, but I didn't know it. So to get back to your question um when i got into the prison and the door slammed and all the rest it it wasn't a matter of thinking oh my here i am for 30 years it was how can i get out of here and so that i maintained that all the way through until I escaped. So you escaped. We'll let people read the book to get some of the details. But then they caught you. And in the shootout, one of the people that escaped with you, I believe, was killed, if I read that correctly. So you survived, which maybe is miracle number three or miracle number four, if we're keeping track, thrown in prison this time, now in solitary confinement

for, I believe, three years, if I read it correctly. Are those details right for number one? And number two, is this where things started to change for you? And if so, how? This is where the change began. I was locked into a little six-by-nine cell by myself, and there was nothing to do. I was there 24-7. I was able to get out twice a week for about 15 minutes to take a shower by myself. So what could I do? The only option was to read. And so I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Mein Kampf, which was Hitler's solution for what he called the Jewish problem. Why did they give you Mein Kampf?

How did you get a copy of that? Well, actually, the people that worked in the prison, now this is Mississippi in the 1960s. Okay. They were all white people that worked there. A lot of them thought it was just a shame that I got caught. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Dad explains it.

Keep going. Yeah. But there was a prison farm, 18,000 acres. And it had what you might call barracks surrounded by chain link fences with guard towers on the corners where inmates would be spread out over this 18,000 acres. And originally they did farming, raised cotton and vegetables to feed the inmates and stuff like that. So, I've forgotten where I was going. I was asking about, you were reading during the solitary confinement. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So anyway,

it wasn't, it was, the institution was more a reflection of what evolved in a kind of agrarian society. It wasn't a well-structured, well-thought-through kind of thing like you would find in many prisons today, or most prisons, I guess. So they just let me order anything I wanted. And, you know, I could order books if I wanted to. And so I got what I was interested in. So I got that. I got a number of other racist and anti-Semitic books. One of the last ones I read was a book that was a bit more robust in terms of intellectual content. It was neo-fascist political theory. I began to come into contact with some philosophical thinking, which intrigued me.

And I decided, you know, I would like to read the classics. I'd read Plato, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius, who's a Stoic guy. And so I read through all their works and really enjoyed it, found it stimulating. That's generally not considered the first line of approach to conversion to Christ. Sure. But God and his providence used it. Two things that really resonated very strongly with me were the idea that truth is objective.

Wow. truth is objective wow it's not a matter of one's preference it's out there it's out there to be discovered we don't get to make it up and then old socrates, when he said, the unexamined life is not worth living. And so that put me on a trajectory. I thought, well, you know, I want to seek truth. And I want to examine my life. Now, I had no clue at that point that this would take me away from what I'd been believing. But the more I read, the more I studied in searching for truth

and reading better literature, by the way, But the more I read, the more I studied in searching for truth, reading better literature, by the way. Actually, it was conservative intellectuals that I was reading. I found some real help there. Actually, it may surprise people, but it was one particular book by Burnham. What's his first name? I can't recall immediately. James.

James Burnham, a philosophy professor. He, in just one chapter, dismantled the foundations of racism and anti-Semitism that had been mainstays for me. Just demolished it the way only a good philosopher could do. Like a skilled surgeon with a scalpel. I mean, he just demolished it very neatly. And I was not a Christian now by any stretch of the imagination. But I was beginning a Christian now by any stretch of the imagination,

but I was beginning to see things, lights were coming on intellectually. I was kind of beginning to think instead of just live ideologically. And so as this process went on, I began to feel a desire to read the scripture, the gospels particularly. And again, I didn't have any idea where this was going. It was just all part of this search for truth. And I'd read the Bible before, but this time it was different. I started reading in Matthew's gospel. And by the time I got to chapter 16, I was in serious trouble. I was in serious trouble.

The Holy Spirit had been opening my eyes to see what I had not seen before. It was there all the time, but I had not seen. I had not perceived it. It was like being a blind person and having your eyes, your vision restored. For me, it was more like if you're in a say you're in your dining room and the lights are out and you turn the you turn the switch, you start turning up the brightness of the lights. Things get brighter and brighter and brighter. That's what's going on with me. And one thing hit me like a laser-guided bomb.

What does it profit a man to win the whole world and lose his own soul? And that's what I had been doing. It just struck me. That's what I had been doing. It just struck me. That's what I'd been doing. I had given my soul for this ideology, given everything and nearly lost my life for this ideology. And in the midst of all this, the Holy Spirit began to bring to my attention my sins, which had not been a part of this earlier baptism and church membership thing. I was afraid of going to hell. I knew generally that I was a sinner.

You know, you don't go to a Baptist church many times without hearing that message. And so I knew I had a sinner. You don't go to a Baptist church many times without hearing that message. I knew I had a problem and I needed a solution. And so making a profession of faith and getting baptized was the answer, but there was no repentance involved in that. This was different. I began to really experience what they call conviction of sin, that I had sinned many, many different ways I'd sinned. Not just the political and the violence and all the rest. I mean, God convicted me of sin. And what do you do? You know, well, here's where the Baptists come in and get some good press. They had taught me so many times that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

Amen. That whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life. So I knew right where to go. And I got on my knees one night and prayed a very simple prayer and gave my life to Jesus. And something changed inside of me. And I haven't been the same since thank god that um so how did how did you get out if you had a 30-year prison sentence you got out i believe after eight years on good conduct on? Tell us what happened. Yeah, well, the next day after I prayed that

prayer, life was different. God was real to me in ways I'd never known before, and I had this hunger for scripture and for prayer and to live for God. Those three things. And they stayed with me now. I was converted in 1970. And those are still major, major things in my heart and mind. But I spent hours a day reading the Bible. And well, I began to experience what Paul talked about in Romans 12 to a renewal of my mind that brought about a change in my life, you know? And so my life did change.

And that's a true conversion inevitably means a change in life. You don't experience true conversion and remain the same you know you may be slow getting started but um you know that's the sign you know a changed life is the sign of true conversion and that happened to me it was slow i was after all just in a six by nine cell and not a whole lot of influence otherwise. But God was at work. And so I gained a lot of knowledge reading the word and somehow stumbled onto C.S. Lewis. Oh, man, I loved C.S. Lewis. Gave me a much more robust intellectual basis for my beliefs. And so that took me into other apologists. And the Methodist chaplain who could see what was going on here. This was 1970 was a year when the Holy Spirit was doing some extraordinary things in America.

Now, you know about it in California better than a lot of other people maybe know about it. But it was happening in Mississippi, too. I've talked to many people who were converted in 1970 in unusual ways. Well, God was at work and, you know, I was learning truth more and more. And this Methodist chaplain gave me a book that he had in seminary that was written by a Presbyterian theologian. And that really set me off moving toward theology, more formal, systematic theology. And I saw a number of names there that attracted me and got theology books and got into reading systematic theology. First one was Berkhoff's Systematic Theology.

Yeah. It's a good primer even today. It is. There are other good ones in addition to Berkkoff but uh he was my first so what what i noticed though one of the things i noticed is that the the sounder i got the dryer i got that's interesting it doesn't always work that way but I was isolated. I didn't have a church. I didn't have a community.

I didn't have people around me. And so I was focused on the cognitive and the academic to the, I would say, the neglect, I got so bewitched and absorbed in all the intellectual that, you know, I didn't really give as much attention to the heart and really knowing God in a deeper personal way. That imbalance eventually got corrected. Anyway, kind of getting back to the answer to your question. You'll probably notice that I can give long answers to short questions. That's okay. There was a change in my life that was noticed. I should tell you the backstory too about my conversion. This, people find this particularly interesting. When I

was converted, J. Edgar Hoover found out about it. He had a network that beats all networks. So he found out about it and he sent two FBI agents to interview me because he thought this was just another jailhouse religion type thing and looking for a way to escape again. And he had been personally involved in my case, kind of monitoring it while these agents were doing their undercover work there in Meridian. So a couple of the agents that had interviewed me in Meridian trying to get me, get information, whatever,

were sent up to see me and they said, "'Well, tell us what happened to you "'or what's this we hear?' And I was a very immature Christian. And I didn't know what to do. And so I just told them my testimony. And they went away scratching their heads. But one of them, two or three months later,

had the same experience I had. He was born again. And he was a kind of prominent member of the First Baptist Church of Meridian and thought he was a Christian. Interesting. But he'd never been born again. But he saw what God had done in changing me, and he realized that he was missing something.

He also had a praying wife. That'll do it. That'll do it. So anyway, he came to the Lord, and we became great friends and were for many years until he died of cancer. But onward to the story here, his wife had this prayer group of some ladies there in Meridian, and they met weekly to pray. And they were not your intellectuals. They were just ordinary Christians who had, well, in that era, had met the Lord. And their lives had been changed.

They were church people who had really come to be born again. And so they would meet weekly and pray. And they prayed for me for two years. And they hadn't gotten mature yet. So they actually believed everything they read in the Bible. They thought, well, God does miracles. tour yet so they actually believed everything they read in the bible but they thought well god does miracles he can save this guy let's pray for that and they prayed for me weekly for two years to be converted that's kind of the story behind the story of my conversion these godly praying women and they kept on praying And they were praying after several years.

My life had changed. They'd send me books to read and came up and visited. And I got rebaptized. They came for that. So they'd write letters and whatnot. So they were praying for me. And at a certain point, all of them thought, including the FBI agent, Frank Watts,

well, this guy, he's changed. He can do more good out of prison than in prison. Let's pray God will let him out. There you go. So they started praying. And another group that had gotten involved in all of this from the Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Mississippi, which is just a few miles away from the prison, they were praying. And this went on for a while.

I mean, it didn't happen overnight. It was, I guess, two or three years. They were just praying for God to let me out. And, you know, there are a lot of ins and outs that are quite fascinating. um i i the the prison was mandated by the federal court to really reduce its uh population and they changed guidelines and whatnot and i was technically eligible because i'd spent eight years by that time in prison and so I was interviewed by the warden who had just gotten there a couple of weeks before, new on the job.

And so he interrogated me. I was called up to his office and he interrogated me. And the commissioner of corrections was sitting in the background just listening. He had to approve what the warden decided. And so, you know, he wanted to know. He had this big file in front of him of my escapades and escape and all that. He said, why should I let you out of here? And I just told him my story. And he said, he listened quietly and patiently and he said, well, I wouldn't let you out of here on the strength of your religion because I don't think it's worth a nickel. He said, I've been in this business for, I think he said, 16 years, and he didn't really have a whole lot of use for

religion, but he could see that my life had changed. He said, it's obvious you've changed, and I want to give you a chance to make something of yourself so you can leave middle of next week. Wow, incredible. Just incredible. Now, the backstory to that, the near-term backstory to that is that both of these prayer groups,

the one down in Meridian and the one nearby Cleveland, Mississippi, Presbyterian women in there, and a few men, they were alerted to this interview. And so they were all praying. So this guy didn't have a chance. The Lord was really working in that.

It's just, I can't explain it any other way. So from there off, I went to the University of Mississippi and studied classics and just amazing. Now eventually you wrote a book years ago and then this book again, Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love, which I love is kind of an update of that. Did the Klan respond and if so how to you criticizing them and sharing your story and going somewhat public yeah well very logical question to ask uh at that point the clan had when the book came out the Klan had been largely decimated a lot of the

leaders were in prison there's still still people scattered around that were danger but it was a very different kind of climate but given that there was a reasonable concern about what some of these remnants might do, I felt it was right to move from... I was at university, as I said, of Mississippi. And I was invited actually to come to the Washington area and get involved in a discipling ministry. And so that's what I did. I got out of harm's way before harm came to me. And so I've been here now for 46 years and never had any problems. Two more questions for you. One, were you able to reconnect with your father and how did he respond? I was. After I was released from prison, I went to see my dad. He'd come up off and on. He and my rebelliousness and the pain and suffering and

disgrace that i had brought on the family And he was very gracious and he didn't hold anything against me. And, you know, he was happy to let the past be the past. And so that was a good thing to resolve that. And I'm grateful that he was as kind to me as he was. Yeah, I'm really glad. I'm really glad to hear that. which is before some of the just cultural conversation obviously was ramped up in 2020 with the killing of George Floyd and just so much attention on racial issues. Things have shifted since then, but it seems just as polarized and divisive as ever in different ways.

The last chapter in your book is kind of concluding thoughts, so to speak, and it says, the challenge we face today. What is the challenge we face today, and what is your advice for Christians in light of just your story and your understanding of Scripture? Yes. Well, we are, I don't believe I'm overstating the case here, we are in a very serious period of history in America

and really in the world. But we've got here in America this swirling vortex of cultural, social, racial, ethnic conflict. And like with me in the 60s, it's very disorienting for many people. And people do strange things in times like these. They're easily hijacked by ideology. And I'm not talking about one or another particular shape and form for this it happens on the right it happens on the left the same overall climate is affecting everybody and so the great danger of people being seduced by ideologies that are really very, very problematic.

It's just everywhere. You can't get away from it. So the question is not which ideology do I adopt? For the true Christian, I'm talking about it. It's not, well, which side do I pick? Am I going to go right or left? That's not really the first question. The first question is, how can I be faithful to God

in this world today? How can I be faithful to God? We have to stand above all of these worldly ideologies. And we have to be committed first and foremost for us. And you know Jesus is not what a lot of people think, even a lot of Christians. We don't really take seriously the Jesus of the scriptures of the gospels but Jesus isn't this warm fuzzy guy

that says come on let's sing Kumbaya and all is going to be well he calls us to seek to repent and believe the gospel Mark 1.15, and to seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness, not the kingdoms of this world. Seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness.

That's what we need to do. We need to be focused on that. As I see it, many people today think, you know, at all costs, we must save America for a variety of reasons, on the left and the right. That's the wrong idea, I think. We must seek first the kingdom of God. We must seek to spread God's kingdom and to live as faithful witnesses of

Jesus Christ. This has to stand over and above all of the political machinations that we're seeing today. When people were baptized into churches back in the early days, pre-Constantinian days, well, the great confession of the faith was two words, Jesus is Lord, which means in a culture where Caesar was Lord, emperor worship was a very big or to Rome or to the kingdoms of this world. But my allegiance is, first of all, to Jesus.

That is something, a shift some of us may need to make in our thinking about the time we're living in. Jesus has to be first. And Jesus went on to say, not simply seek first the kingdom, but he became more granular. If you want to follow me, if you want to be my my disciple and a disciple is the same thing as a christian there's no difference between those are just different words for the same thing luke says in acts 11 26 the disciples were first called christians at antioch so it's a name given

to people who are disciples of jesus And we're called to be disciples. And Jesus says, if you really want to follow me and be my disciple, here's what you're going to have to do. You're going to have to deny yourself and take up your cross daily and follow me. And that is a very costly thing to do. Because denying yourself isn't skipping dessert during Lent or something. It's saying a radical no to our self-centered life. Everything that's contrary to Jesus and his way.

And taking up the cross isn't putting up with some disagreeable family member or something. Everybody knew what that meant. It was the Roman instrument of execution. You had to be prepared to give your life for Christ if that's what it took to be faithful. And then you follow. Follow me, follow my teaching teaching and follow my example. And that moves into living a life of love. Jesus said, love God with all your heart,

love God supremely, love your neighbor compassionately. These are the two great commandments. And he said, even love your enemy. And when we do that, when the church does that, people, lost people, a fallen world takes notice. And the great challenge today is that we aren't doing that enough that we have compromised with the world in all kinds of ways that obscure jesus and his work in our lives our faithfulness to him we have really lost it we have very little credibility in the eyes of non-Christians in this culture.

For good reasons. Sure. Well, just think about it. I mean, people are not going to believe the message if they don't trust the messenger. and that's the challenge for the church today and for every believer to walk as Jesus walked as John first John says you know this is how we know that we're in him that we walk as he walked we walk as Jesus walked living a life of faithful discipleship with Jesus and a company of others. You've got to have the church. There's no solo Christianity. You've got to have the church. You've got to have other believers that you walk with. This becomes a kind of critical mass if we're walking with Jesus, that emits light in the darkness of this world.

So we can be light and we can speak truth. And so, you know, I guess another thing to say here, loving God supremely, loving our neighbors, ourselves, loving our enemies, and then being people who seek truth. Amen. Truth seekers. Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. Jesus was full of grace and truth. And we are just absolutely barraged with lies in our culture. Lies from the right, lies from the left.

Mark Twain made the comment, you have to beware of lies, damn lies and statistics. We really need to be careful what we take on board. We need to get to the root of it and see if it actually is true, if it conforms with reality. Truth conforms with reality. And that's what we must do, be people who seek the truth and people who speak the truth and people who live the truth that's what we're called to do and then finally um the novel idea that instead of being troublemakers maybe we should be peacemakers great that's what j Jesus calls us to be peacemakers. And as we live this kind of life, it's countercultural. And people begin to want to know what in the world is going on with that guy or that gal.

That's what we need to do in the midst of all this, because God has appointed us to live in the midst of this mess. And he has plans for each one of us. And for those to be fulfilled, we need to be walking with him and filled and empowered and led by his Spirit to walk as Jesus walked. That's my short answer. Tom, that's beautiful. The idea of seeking truth, the idea of being peacemakers, being countercultural, genuinely loving our neighbors and resisting lies. I could not have said it better myself. That's beautiful. I hope folks will pick up your book, I'm sorry, Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love, total page turner. It's powerful. Thanks for taking the time to really unpack your story

and give us depth. And there's a lot more in the book that I hope people will pick up as well. Hold up a copy here. Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love. Powerful, powerful read. Please check it out. And before you sign off, make sure you hit subscribe.

We're looking to just tell stories to people like you heard today, powerful stories that have kind of an apologetic angle to it, as you heard come out today as well. Make sure you hit subscribe. And if you thought about studying apologetics, I would love to have you with me at Biola, either in person or fully distanced, teaching classes on the resurrection, the problem of evil. We have a class this fall on apologetics and artificial intelligence and more. So information is below. Would love to have you.

And we also have a certificate program below. If you want to study apologetics but aren't ready for a master's, there's a good discount below. Check it out. Tom, thanks again for coming on. This really was a treat. Well, thank you, Sean. It's been a delight being with you.