Joseph Pearce: from small town England to national racist leader to prison – and then to God through the Church

Not All Roads Lead to God

By Austin Ruse 

Not all roads lead to God. Many – maybe most – lead to perdition. All genuine conversion stories, though, lead to the Church. All conversion stories fascinate but some, maybe for their drama and the tremendous arc of someone’s life, fascinate more than others.

Joseph Pearce came onto the Catholic radar screen sixteen years ago with a biography called Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G.K. Chesterton. There’s hardly a faithful Catholic that has not been touched by Chesterton. William Buckley used to hand out Orthodoxyto anyone writing to him about the faith. He sent one to me.

Pearce followed up with Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief. What joy! Here was a guy working that special British vein of literary Catholicism and conversion that American Catholics love so well. From Campion to Newman to Chesterton, even Oscar Wilde. And here was a guy picking and scratching at that vein and still finding ore. And he kept it up. A biography of Tolkienfollowed, one on Belloc, one on Wilde. Pearce became a small family-owned industry of quite remarkable books.

But all along we heard the strangest things about him. We heard he spent time in prison. Yeah, well I heard he killed a guy. Like Gatsby, we looked forward to the day he would tell his story. That day has come.

Race with the Devil: My Journey from Racial Hatred to Rational Love recounts Pearce’s life from small town England to national racist leader to prison – and then to God through the Church. First, he did not kill anyone. He would say, but for the grace of God he didn’t, because he was certainly in a position to kill and even more to be killed.




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