Hallman’s second book on American countercultures, his first being The Chess Artist, is also like a religious buffet for the spiritually starved. 

Along his journey, Hallman tastes 8 fringe religions and soaks them in a philosophical sauce prepared almost a century ago by William James. Hallman revels in the legacy of James’ mind while paying tribute to the only method of discovery proven to instill belief: personal experience. 

Is your new book, “The Devil is Gentleman”, more about America or about religion or about one man’s journey? 

I think it’s a portrait—both of William James, and of an America that has been evolving religiously, with his input. Maybe it’s impressionistic in the sense that you see all this through first person narration—my eyes. 

You approach these religions from an outsider’s perspective. Your insights are so grounded that it makes me wonder: are you a spiritual person? 

After I gave up on Catholicism—when I was like, seven—I think I crafted a kind of personal pantheism, something between Hegel and Thoreau and Gaia. This was later, late adolescence, so it was just a sort of inchoate reverence for everything. It wasn’t really systematic. I don’t know if that counts as spiritual, but that’s kind of where things stood as I headed into the book. 

How do you define your personal connection to a God? 

I’d like to think that we cooperate with the divine, if there is such a thing. All work that pursues truth is sacred. 

Do you believe in God? In the Devil? 

No, not like this. This would imply a dualistic system. I don’t think duality describes reality very well, at least the way it’s understood in the west in that either/or kind of way. If there is anything, it’s got to be more complicated than that. 

Which do you fear more in the world: a gentlemanly devil or an outwardly forwardly evil devil figure? (Saddam Hussein/Hitler type versus GWB type??) 

Which one is which? People voted for Hitler, and then he dissolved his country’s laws. Sounds familiar. Hitler was probably a better speaker. If we’re talking divine forms, I think the devils in Buddhist and Hindu pantheons are most interesting—they’re necessary, but you don’t vote them into office, for Christ’s sake. 

Which type of devil figure do you think has the capability of doing more harm to society? 

We’re still talking Bush and Hitler? They both mucked things up pretty good. Hitler probably wins in the long run, but only because Bush is ostensibly operating within a democracy and it’s harder for him to get things done. 

When was that moment in your life when you realized that there MUST be more than science or reason can define about life? 

I had a bad motorcycle accident once, when I was twenty. There were some moments in the hospital when I had to self-induce something like a trance to handle some pretty serious pain. I would lie there and concentrate, for hours…and I just sort of had to do it. It’s not something I could replicate. But it was definitely a moment when I realized that morphine could only take you so far, and that the mind had a reservoir of untapped resources. This accident was actually the incident that I chose to “audit” when I spent time in Scientology for the book. Scientology, when it’s not trying to sell you stuff, is about going back and reliving painful memories…so I went back to the scene of that accident. 

I understand you pulled away from Catholicism as an institution. What were the emotions that you attributed to this religious institution that made it a negative thing for you? 

It was more like an absence of emotion. William James was a pretty regular church-goer, but he had the same problem. Services were filled with what he called “second-hand automatisms.” It had none of the fervor of actual religious experience. The Catholicism I was exposed to was just habit. 

Describe your God to me, whether it be imaginary or your true belief. 

God, to me, is the idea that what we do matters. 

Can you see the connection between fears of death and the need for the manifestation of a God? 

This I felt less during the accident, and more when my dog died, just recently. I had a sixteen year-old German shepherd, Becky. We were pretty close, and she was part of the reason I included the monks of New Skete, who raise German shepherds for their living, in the book. Anyway, I was there as she died—it’s hard to watch something, anything, die. It happened about as well as such a thing can, I imagine, but still, just at that moment when I knew she was dead, the thought came to me, entirely organically, with no premeditation, with no rational thought interfering, that it would be nice if I eventually got to see her again. I’m not one to believe in a literal supernatural, or in heaven, or in the transmigration of souls or whatever—but there’s something that stays with me about how easily, how naturally, this thought slipped into my head. 

You’ve noticed a fixation of mankind on the end of the world in the fringe religions. Why do you think we all focus so much on the “end”? 

Eschatological schemes probably create the need for self-reckoning. If you’re using a religion to change your ways, it probably helps to have a deadline, something in the daily planner to keep you focused. It’s much more effective than its opposite, which is maybe something like a New Year’s resolution. Maybe best is Christianity, which has both—the resolutions of the Ten Commandments and Christ’s teachings, as well as the threat of Judgment Day. It’s not just the fringe that relies on apocalyptic prophecy. 

It appears that the only true example of “normalcy” in your book is you. Why did you choose to focus only on the fringe? Why didn’t you include what science likes to call a “control”? An example to put the outsiders up against? 

Am I normal? I’m not so sure. I sure didn’t seem normal when I was in the middle of a solstice celebration—I stuck out like a sore thumb. 

I chose to focus on the fringe because that’s exactly what William James did. He said that you could understand the center by looking at various points on the fringe and essentially triangulating from there. I was recreating his effort to some extent. So I looked at the fringe too, a fringe that not only revealed the center, but also revealed how James’s ideas have manifested over a century. 

There are contrasts made in your book where the reader can see the similarities and differences between each of the religions. Did you find any interesting differences between religious interpretations of members within the same faith? 

There’s a great example of this in the book, actually. Wicca—specifically the Covenant of the Goddess. They all revered the idea of the Goddess, but for some it was purely symbolic—they were atheists. Others were monotheists, or duotheists, or polytheists. Yet they were trying to survive as a single organization. This embodies exactly the kind of pluralism James says the world needs. They were celebrating their variety. 

William James was known to have experimented with various drugs in order to connect to the spiritual. Have you ever experimented with drugs and did they have the same profound effect on you? 

Nope. I’m kind of geeky that way. Incidentally, this has been a bit overblown in James’s history. He did try drugs—but he tried everything. At the end of his life, he said he’d never really had a true religious experience himself. The closest he came were a few moments that seemed to initiate out of nothing—they had nothing to do with drugs. He was a dabbler, though. 

Do you think it’s necessary to be educated about the varieties of religions in the world in order to truly be able to stand beside your own? In other words, do you think that knowledge/education increases or decreases faith? 

I don’t know if educating yourself helps you stand alongside your own—I’m sure it depends on what that is. Fanaticism doesn’t seem to need much education in anything to perpetuate itself—indeed it seems to thrive on a lack of it. But that’s probably not what you mean. I think if we’re ever to figure out how to celebrate variety, then some education would probably help. Seeing how others do things is maybe the only way we can figure out how to keep house together. Having said that, though, it doesn’t seem very likely to me. 

If you could, would you travel the world in the same search, or is your interest primarily in the evolution of American religious outcasts? 

I limited myself in this book to religions with a strong American component, and looked at those that emerged basically in the twentieth century. But really those were loose rules—when you look at any religion, you’re generally looking at something that’s been cobbled together out of traditions from all over the world. Now I want to write about utopian communities—we’ll see if that happens. But if I do, I’ll probably wind up going abroad. 

Not all of us have the freedom to up and travel all around the country/world to view that which we don’t immediately understand. How can we replicate this journey for ourselves? Do you even think we should? 

I don’t think it’s that hard. If you’re in NY, you obviously have access to a lot of fringe groups. I’ve found the same thing in Philadelphia, where I lived last year, and even in rural Virginia, where I am now. The internet has helped make fringe groups very accessible. These people are not terribly hard to find. It’s interesting—Huizinga talks about sacred space, space that becomes so hallowed that we forget that we might be able to just walk in there. I think a lot of these groups have that kind of aura. But actually you can just walk in—and in fact, the people in there want you to do just that. 

If we should: what is the one conclusion you hope we (also) come to? 

Variety—that we should struggle to appreciate variety. And William James. In the 2000 election, both Gore and Bush were asked who their favorite philosopher was. Bush said “Jesus Christ,” and Gore said, “Jesus Christ…you have to say that.” I wish just one of them had said William James, the last great American philosopher. And a major pioneer of liberal thought, by the way. 

Do you think that any of the religions you experienced have true staying power? 

Scientology does, Wicca probably. Atheism’s been around a while. The monks are getting older, and monastic life isn’t exactly drawing in the youngsters. Unarius may fade over time, though they’re still going strong now, even through their prophet has been dead for more than ten years. 

But maybe this is another question that ought to be asked a little differently. James once responded to the criticism of violent conversions that come from revivals. The criticism was that the conversion was only temporary, and soon you had backslidings. They didn’t hold up so well against, say, Tolstoy’s conversion. But James wasn’t so quick to condemn them just for being temporary. He compared it to love. Love may be temporary, but does that diminish the feeling? Were we not in love because it ended? The same held for violent conversions, or any religious experience. “That it should for even a short time show a human being what the high-water mark of his spiritual capacity is, this is what constitutes its importance,” he wrote. 

Something similar surely applies to religions as well.