‘Son of a Preacher Man' by Gavin Evans

TimesLIVE

14-05-2025

ABOUT THE BOOK
'I was flying from Rio to San Marcos, Texas, in December 1977 for my year as a Rotary student, but it was hard to concentrate on the book I was reading on American history. I got to a bit on Roosevelt's New Deal. This would normally have fascinated me but I struggled to focus because I knew I had an essential task to fulfil: a prayer to deliver. Finally, I closed my eyes: 'Dear Lord, I know what I'm about to say will upset you, but I am taking a year off from being a Christian. I am having a year's break. Amen.''
Gavin Evans' father was a bishop, a husband and father, and a fair-minded man with passion for social justice. He could also throw a mean punch at his 11-year-old son.
Evans was never sure what father he'd encounter, and in this extraordinary memoir, he tries to piece together the world of his father, the disintegration of their relationship and the journey to love and healing shortly before the bishop's death.
EXTRACT
This extract explores Evans' increasing defiance of his dogmatic father as an older teen and the effects of his growing independence. After years of incredulity about his evangelical faith, Gavin boards a plane en route to Texas for a gap year and walks off forever changed. There among the clouds, as he prays to God for what would be the final time, he experiences the kind of inspiration and relief that had long been eluding him in church.
A school friend, who soon after would be expelled for vandalising teachers' cars, told me with a kind of knowing confidence: 'As soon as you leave school, you're going to drop your Jesus thing. I can see it coming.' No-no-no, I replied, but his certainty on the matter of my destiny unsettled me.
Then the Scripture Union people started to irritate me. They produced a little publication called In Magazine, which seemed to have been written by strait-laced, conservative, middle-aged men who were trying their best to be hip in appealing to the youth but were clueless about how to go about this, with excruciating results. We were asked to sell it, but there was no way I could offer this howdy-wowdy nonsense to anybody. Even the choruses I'd happily been singing for years started to get on my nerves.
They all began to seem so facile. I couldn't quite give words to it, but I sensed I was heading for a fall. I still went to the Connection youth group and to church on Sundays, but my mind was drifting. I decided that a year abroad would give me the space to think, and so I applied for a Rotary Exchange scholarship. I was accepted and got a place in San Marcos in Texas.
Meanwhile, in my last year at school, I argued for 'one man, one vote', the legalisation of dagga (cannabis) and abortion on demand, all of which upset the Christians among the Grey High School teaching staff. I wrote angry poetry, which the Irishman who taught English read to his class as an example of spirited message poetry, but which the Christian teacher in charge of the school magazine banned.
I was asked to stand for the prestigious position of president of the Grey Union, not because I was wanted for the role, nor because I wanted it, but because it looked better if the election was contested. I reluctantly agreed, which meant I had to make a speech. Not wanting the position, I didn't bother to prepare, and instead just said whatever came into my head. I ended up winning more votes than the intended candidate, which also meant I was made a school prefect, but I soon decided that I opposed the prefect system. I campaigned against a teacher I despised, drawing cartoons featuring a silly man with his distinctive John Denver hairstyle, and lampooned him in a satirical piece in the school newspaper. Soon after, I was caned for my bad attitude – the first prefect in the school to be officially beaten. I made friends outside Christian circles, gave up on 'tongues', and when I closed my eyes to pray, my thoughts drifted off and I'd end up reaching for the tissue box – sometimes inspired by my father's Françoise Hardy LP record covers.
At seventeen, after my final exams, I arranged to go drinking with friends. This provoked a stand-off with Bruce, who insisted that I promise to have no more than one glass. 'I'll drink as much as I want,' I replied, trying to hold his eye. We stood face to face in the doorway of his study. He was much bigger than me, and I knew I had no chance at punching distance, so I stepped in even closer, thinking that if he made a move, I'd go in for a hip throw and then put him in a scarf hold. But this time he didn't make a move. He just walked back to his desk.
Three days later I was in the living room, absorbed in a Time magazine feature on Jimmy Carter. Bruce entered with Shirley, one of his Christian friends, and he instructed me to rise – 'always stand for a lady'.
I thought standing for a woman was absurd, especially when chairs and sofas were available, so I remained seated. 'Stand up, son,' he commanded. I shook my head. His tone became sharper. 'Stand!' I looked him in the eyes and said slowly, 'No. I won't.' After several seconds of silence, Shirley sat and then Bruce sat. Only then did I rise, and walked out of that living room, flushed with my victory, without any thought for how this father–son man-off had put Shirley in an embarrassing position. With that, the final vestiges of paternal authority evaporated. There was elation in the knowledge that he could no longer control me – or, perhaps it would be better to say, that he could no longer contain me.
A few days later I joined my friend Vernon, hitchhiking down the coast. When we reached the town of Knysna, we slept on the beach. In the morning I wandered off to read the pocket Bible I had stored in my backpack. But it was no good. I just stared at the pages and gave up after a minute. Soon after, I hitchhiked again, this time to join the family on holiday in Cape Town and met up with my friend David on the way. He packed a bottleneck with dagga, and I had my first experience of being stoned. I liked it.
And it was then that I realised that a break with Jesus was imminent.
***
I was flying from Rio to San Marcos, Texas, in December 1977 for my year as a Rotary student, but it was hard to concentrate on the book I was reading on American history. I got to a bit on Roosevelt's New Deal. This would normally have fascinated me but I struggled to focus because I knew I had an essential task to fulfil: a prayer to deliver. Finally, I closed my eyes: 'Dear Lord, I know what I'm about to say will upset you, but I am taking a year off from being a Christian. I am having a year's break. Amen.'
The ties that bound me to God were like synapses that had connected my brain ever since birth. It took the severing of parental power and the disembodiment of being in a tube above the clouds to find the will to break them. I needed the physical gap with my father before I could find the emotional and mental gap, the freedom and the courage, to make my move.
Once I had done that, something unexpected happened – the very thing that had failed to occur when I was 'born again' and 'baptised in the spirit' and sang those hallelujah choruses in all those youth groups.
I experienced an epiphany, an overwhelming sense of relief. My eyes opened and I began to process all those latent thoughts that I'd been pushing aside ever since I'd learnt that 'matter cannot be created or destroyed'.
By the time the plane landed, I'd moved on from my little prayer. I was no longer sure about anything, but I realised that I was not a Christian in suspense for a year. I was no longer a Christian. Twenty-six years earlier, Bruce had gone from being a Jewish atheist to a born-again Christian in one night. I had just done something similar – in the opposite direction.
The next day in San Marcos, Texas, I settled in with a Catholic family, who asked if I was an Episcopalian.
'No, I'm an agnostic,' I replied – the first time I'd used that word. I wrote home the next day, informing my parents I no longer believed what they did. I didn't yet know what I believed – atheism would take more than another decade to settle – but sitting at my desk in the bedroom, I felt open to ideas and to exploration.
When I reached the end of my letter, I hesitated. The hand-out cards Rotary had printed for me said 'Gavin M Evans', and my host family took this cue. It was not too late to put them right by informing them that, actually, I preferred to use my second name, Mark. But as my pen hovered, I thought again of the apostle who changed his name after his eyes were opened, and it struck me that my eyes had been opened. I signed off: 'Love, Gavin'.