The Man Who Learned Too Much
For eight years, William Lobdell reported on an industry plagued by scandal, deceit and corruption. It cost him his faith, and now he’s writing a book about his odyssey. By Craig Reem
William Lobdell sits in his teenage son’s neatly kept bedroom. An oil portrait of the Rolling Stones rests against a wall. A window allows in the light of another perfect East Side Costa Mesa day. Only the noise of passing cars and giggling children intrudes upon the quiet echo of his words – they resonate off the polished wood floor.
The setting is peaceful, but there’s a pain on his face. Maybe it’s uncertainty about the fame he may soon experience. Or maybe it’s the result of the eight years he spent reporting on an industry plagued by scandal, deceit and corruption. It did, after all, cost him his faith.
Lobdell, 47, is one of the area’s most important journalists. His voice has been carried in many local news venues over the course of two decades – from his early days as the editor of this magazine, to his time as the editor of the Daily Pilot, to serving as city editor for the Los Angeles Times’ Orange County edition. But his voice never carried the same reach and power as it did one Saturday last summer. After covering the religion beat for the Times from 1998 to 2006, Lobdell confessed his loss of faith in a soul-baring piece that ran in the Column One position on the front page of the newspaper. The sex scandals of the Catholic Church and the misdeeds of other religion-based organizations had extinguished his belief in God. His emotional revelation ignited an avalanche of emails – more than the paper had ever gotten for a single news story.
“(I am) a reluctant atheist,” he says at one point, putting into words the angst this former evangelical Christian feels. And it seems to be the theme of his life these days.
Lobdell is about to publish a groundbreaking memoir that will mine the most intimate emotions – feelings that, for years, were generated in part by one of the biggest business stories of the decade. A focus of his reporting: one of the most massive, influential business entities of them all, outside of government itself. The Catholic Church.
The dramatic tale of the church’s sex scandal brought to light thousands of victims. Lobdell was a believer going in, but the journey left him profoundly changed by the intimacy of his reporting.
And the story itself is not going away. Pope Benedict XVI apologized several times during his historic visit to the U.S. last month, at one point telling reporters, “We will
do what is possible so this cannot happen again in
the future.”
For those who know him, Lobdell’s confession that he no longer believes in a personal God was remarkable.
“His painful decision was a tragedy, but also understandable, given his optimism, sense of decency and sensitivity as a human,” says one longtime friend. “I suspect reconciling the conflicts he has experienced has not been easy, but followed a rigorous self-examination and reflection on the depravity he witnesses as a reporter who happened to be Christian.”
And therein lies the irony of this story.
Lobdell gave up the beat willingly, but he lost his faith in painful fits. When it was gone, it was gone. He stopped going to church during Holy Week in 2002 and felt the last strand of faith slip away three years later.
This is the stuff of Hollywood movies: a determined thirty-something some 10 years ago, primed to turn an often throwaway beat into a respectful one; a deeply religious man taking conversion classes to become a Catholic, the timing of his tenure coming as the church’s deep, dark secret exploded. He considered, perhaps naively at the time, that as a journalist, he could be like St. Francis of Assisi, who helped reform the church in the 13th century: “I thought maybe in my little, teeny way, I can expose some of the scandal and create the healing, and that was my role. I’m (now) more like Job’s wife, who while Job is scraping the boils off his body, she’s saying, ‘Just curse Him and be over with it; why do you keep doing this?’ ”
For now, though, it’s a book that’s scheduled to be published in February by HarperCollins. The title is “Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith While Reporting on Religion in America.”
Already, the story has created a buzz. In July, when Lobdell revealed his abandonment of religion in his Column One piece (titled “Religion beat became a test of faith”), the Times received a record 2,700 emails (300 is considered a profound response to a single story). The vast majority of those who wrote shared their tales of faith tested, strained, found and lost forever.
Journalist Patrick Mott, who studied for the Catholic priesthood and for a time edited a newspaper published by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, believes the essence of Lobdell’s journey – questioning faith – resounds among believers. He says if he asked the question to a roomful of priests, every hand would go up. “It’s really something you have to recommit to,” he says, adding: “Anyone who says he has never doubted has blind faith. You need to ask yourself the crucial question.”
What makes Lobdell’s story unique, Mott says, is the author “has gone one crucial step farther: ‘Here are my chips, I’m out.’”
Getting the beat, and the reality Lobdell – who lives with his wife, Greer Wylder, an entrepreneur with a popular fashion, dining and retail website (greersoc.com), and their four sons, ages 19 to 8 – landed the beat he prayed for in 1998. It was a defining moment. He believed he had received a calling from God to change tepid media coverage in which “spiritual people often appeared as nuts and simpletons,” he wrote last summer. He ended up reporting a far crueler truth.
“You know,” reflects Lobdell, “I had this dream job. And it turned into a nightmare.”
By the end of his trek two years ago, the Catholic Church had been sullied by a deep and ongoing sex scandal. Other religion stories that Lobdell wrote about uncovered corruption and godlessness in many corners. As he studied to become a good Catholic at night, during the day he was investigating abuse of an unparalleled kind. “I began to live a dual life,” he writes in his memoir. “By day, I investigated the local dioceses, dug up documents in courthouses, talked with a seemingly endless string of victims, and interviewed bishops, their aides, attorneys and priests. In my off-hours, I put in my final months of training to become a Catholic.”
In a peripheral way, his coverage called into question the entire makeup of modern religion – of larger-than-life personalities, of believers blind to scandal, of business tactics that blamed the victims and brought aboard high-priced defense attorneys and public relations experts. Lobdell recalls one abuse victim from Orange County who told him he went through 11 days of depositions. “Who does that in a civil case when someone is victimized?” he asks. “He was allegedly raped.”
Business tactics, such as denial, withholding evidence and hammering victims became de rigueur, Lobdell found in his reporting.
The clergy sex scandal and the church’s handling of it “is unique to a lot of organizations,” says Andrew C. Wicks, an ethics professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. “This sense of covering it up; there’s evil here, but not a perceived willingness to clean house and hold people accountable.”
Journalist Mott reflects on the delicate balance facing religion: “The further away it strays from its roots, the more it can produce a sense of cynicism and unbelief. In terms of the Catholic Church, friends kid me now and then about the church being a cash cow. Having seen a little bit of it from the inside, there always will be a business aspect to it – an institution with an infrastructure that has to be maintained. But that should never (hinder) the actual reason for faith – to bring people closer to God.
“If the financial aspect gets in the way, you have to rethink things.”
The Catholic Church, which has paid out billions of dollars in settlements (more than $1 billion in the dioceses of Southern California alone, according to church figures), had to develop a defensive business model that focused more on its real survival than on compensating those who had been injured by priests and bishops.
“The more religion acts like a business, generally, the less faithful it is,” says Lobdell. “I think the reason the Catholic Church got into trouble was that it (responded) like a business. Its first reaction was to protect itself – protect itself from scandal, to protect its priests from liability – and so you have priests getting escorted out of the country, or out of the diocese, or hidden away. You have bishops intimidating the victims. ... They didn’t run it like a shepherd would tend to his flock.”
And, like many businesses facing serious financial penalties, Lobdell says the church only started to reform when it faced large financial losses. “They react only when being threatened by courts or criminal action,” Lobdell says. “They haven’t done any of this on their own.”
Is religion a business?
Douglas J. Rumford is senior pastor at Trinity United Presbyterian Church in North Tustin. The church has thrived under his leadership – donations and attendance figures are way up. Sunday after Sunday, he deftly tiptoes between the financial needs of the church and the spiritual wants of his congregants.
“Does the church have business dimensions? Yes, but ultimately, it is all about the spiritual journey and the spiritual experience,” Rumford says. “As a pastor, I continue to struggle with the forces of our people to make me the CEO of this nonprofit. But I am the pastor of a congregation. There are absolutely business dimensions, business practices, and it’s always a force that is threatening to overtake you.
“You’ve got to stay centered, or it becomes a business; business dimensions overwhelm the real purpose and vision.”
It is that mix of finances and belief that seem to tie up Lobdell. The Catholic Church may be the wealthiest entity in the world. In addition, his reporting on Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) uncovered profligate spending among its leaders that had nothing to do with salvation, but much to do with paying for a high-rolling lifestyle.
The book’s theme
Lobdell says his book won’t be a polemic against religion, but rather one man’s test of faith that – from a Christian point of view at least – ended badly.
Surely, it’s the faith aspect that differentiates coverage of an Enron situation, in which lies, misconduct, shady business practices and deceit brought down one of America’s largest companies, and the case of the Catholic Church, in which lies, sexual misconduct, shady business practices and deceit left it wounded but still a world power. God is in the picture – he is the figure on the cross behind the altar – and that changes the dynamic. It makes it personal. “And it makes it worse,” Lobdell says. “To lie to appease stockholders is one thing; to lie in the name of God is another.”
In his front-page story, Lobdell wrote, “The children were so innocent, their parents so faithful, the priests so sick and bishops so corrupt.” His beat arrived like a perfect storm fast approaching a solitary boat, the captain facing an enormous, powerful wave.
Though Lobdell paid a hefty price with his work, he may profit nicely from the book. His story certainly gained enough attention at the start: Following the piece in the Times, he received a number of inquiries from agents. “It was sort of a natural for a spiritual memoir,” he says. It sold in about a week.
“The focus is really my journey; it’s all about what happened to me,” he says. “It felt like it was an important story to tell. A lot of people have doubts about their faith, have doubts about the church. There is not a way to really express your doubts seriously, certainly within a church setting. … I think it will be of interest and help (to) people.”
The foreshadowing of that can be counted in the emails that streamed to Lobdell and the paper.
“People took a personal interest in either making sure I stayed where I was, or I got to a new religion, or I got back to my old religion,” Lobdell says. “It restored my faith in humanity; people were very loving.”
Lobdell found it surprising that there was little condemnation, yet heavy affirmation. A reading of about 200 of the emails reflect support for his decision. “This is sort of a dark secret that everybody keeps with them, the doubts about their faith and whether they still believe or don’t believe,” he says. “I had a number of pastors who said, ‘I’ve stopped believing; I don’t know what to do; I can’t talk to anybody; this is a huge dilemma.’
“What hit a core, and I have to thank the editor for it, was the honesty of the piece. … Amazingly, religious organizations are not that honest about what’s going on. They want to cover things up because they don’t want to look bad, or they don’t want to reflect poorly on the body of Christ. We’re all human; we’re all going to screw up. There isn’t that flat-out honesty.”
Lobdell’s honesty will be tested in the months ahead, as the book gets pre-publicity reviews. And then there will be the book tour and talk shows, and then publication. “I hope … people respond to it,” he says. “I know I’ll get a lot of criticism.
“What’s nice for me is it’s my journey, and it’s not right or wrong, it’s just what happened.”
God vs. God
Lobdell began his Times story with the declaration, “I believed God had answered my prayers.” At the end of the story, he reported that he had renounced God. Now he is asked if, perhaps, God had tested that prayer.
“I don’t know what kind of God … would do (that),” he responds. “I kept trying to redefine what God wanted
from me.”
Was he right in what he felt? Was he wrong for losing his faith? “I’ll follow the truth wherever it takes me,” he says, though he doubts it will lead back to Christianity.
He defines where he is now – somewhere between a deist, believing there is a God but not a personal God, and a reluctant atheist.
“I don’t think there is a personal God that intervenes in my life and makes things happen (or not happen) for me,” he says.
During a recent roundtable discussion at a men’s church breakfast meeting, Lobdell’s story was outlined to a group of six men, some of whom were critical of his faith loss.
“God breaks us down to build us up,” reminded one. Another pointed out that Christians feel outrage and despair – it is part of belief.
If that’s so, Lobdell says, then Christian life ought to be better: “If Christianity is true, there should be generally a higher standard of behavior.” But, after poring through studies conducted by a variety of organizations – including evangelical pollsters – Lobdell has come to the conclusion that it’s not so.
As his faith waned, he looked for evidence to help him and says he found none. He now believes, for example, there is “no evidence prayer works,” a statement akin to saying God is dead.
Still, while Lobdell mourns his loss of faith, he says he’s found serenity in what he believes is the truth.
“I’m happy that I stopped wishing for what was true, and started believing what I saw.” OCM
Craig Reem is a contributing writer to OC METRO Business Magazine.
Emails about God
Responses to William Lobdell’s Los Angeles Times story about his loss of faith were unprecedented.
William Lobdell’s front-page story in the Los Angeles Times in July detailing how his job covering the religion beat tested his own faith created a firestorm of responses. An avalanche of emails hit the newspaper – some 2,700, in fact, a record for a single story.
Those who wrote included business professionals and regular folks, church-goers and even church leaders. Many quoted from the Bible.
It served as the catalyst for Lobdell’s book deal; the outpouring showed an appetite for the deeply personal meaning of faith.
His wife decided to bind all the emails. There were so many, she had to put them into five sets of books.
Here is a sampling of those responses:
• “I’ve never responded to an article before … the sadness that I feel over the stone cold truth of your article is deep and abiding.”
• “When I drive by a church on a Sunday … I tell my wife, ‘Business is booming this morning.’”
• “To each of us has been given a measure of faith. I pray you will hold on to yours for dear life.”
• “Your sad and disappointing story leads me to conclude that your faith has never been based on the grace of Christ Jesus, but on the Harry Potter belief that God does magic.”
• “(Religion is) really another big scheme.”
• “Brother, is that not how we are? We slide away from God, and then we ask, ‘what happened?’”
• “Today, I have a daily relationship with God I can neither explain or understand, but the comfort and guidance I receive from this God helps me in very tangible ways.”
• “Now that you have realized that morality doesn’t come out of an ancient text or a conclave or old men … I say welcome to the reality-based community.”
• “I know there are good Christians out there, just as there are good Muslims and good Jews, and good Buddhists. But they’re to be found in small local churches and in individual people of character and compassion. As soon as big money, big power, and big bureaucracy enter the picture, religion becomes a capitalist enterprise and spiritual values fly out the window.”
• “Suppose you were covering a (corrupt) local city council (or) an (inept) local school board … You might want to move from the city council beat. But would you stop voting? Would you decide that democracy was doomed?”
• “I feel like we are soul mates.”
• “God is still God, despite the doubts you feel.”
• “William … never leave Him.” OCM
Do you have a story to tell?
Former OC METRO Business Magazine Editor Steve Thomas trolled other book authors’ websites and came across this question from a reader and this answer from an author: “How do you get an agent?” “Write a good book.”
Thomas’ first book, an Orange County-based thriller, “Criminal Paradise,” was released in March to strong reviews, including OC METRO’s Hot Read. “If a book is really good, agents and editors will recognize that,” Thomas says. The second book of the series, “Spiritual Criminals,” has been accepted by Random House, and he is writing his third book, “Cowboys and Criminals.”
Book one took about four years, he recalls. And there was a period of frustration in which he put it down, though he knew his gritty tale deserved to be published.
He agrees that an author should write what he or she knows. Also, write what you enjoy. “That was very much my experience. I came to California (from St. Louis) and started reading crime fiction, and enjoyed it as much as anything I had read – and more than most of what I had read. If I was going to write something, I’d prefer to write something like this. Why not have a robbery, and gun battles, and that sort of stuff? It’s more fun.” OCM
Who can learn from whom?
Business and religion can take cues from each other to be more effective to their respective constituents, says a business ethics professor.
“It’s a dangerous trap and a mistake for business to just be efficient and generating dollars, and for not-for-profits (such as religious groups) focusing only on a mission,” says Andrew C. Wicks. “Whatever the organization, you really want both.”
Wicks is an associate professor of business administration and co-director of the Olsson Center for Applied Ethics at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. He also is an academic adviser for the Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics.
“What the church’s sex scandal case reminds us is that we put a lot of faith not only in a higher being, but in the (church). It makes us vulnerable,” he says.
Religious groups would be wise to adopt many of the practices of business as they relate to mission statements and goal-setting. After all, he says, accountability is important in all organizations, not just in business: “In that sense, religious organizations need to learn something from business.” OCM
