Holy Roller

Julie Lyons

WaterBrook, Jun 2 2009, $18.99

ISBN: 9781400074952

Dallas reporter Julie Lyons was researching an article in the South Dallas slum involving former crack drug addicts claiming they had been miraculously healed at The Body of Christ Assembly Church.  She finds the dilapidated church in an off the main road street of the ghetto.  The minister especially welcomed anyone in search of God whether they were possessed, criminals, addicts, hookers or the homeless.  Instead of telling them to leave, he prayed for their souls.  Her article on the church became the front page of the Dallas Times Herald while Jule a middle class white female with a typical Christian upbringing found the Pentecostal Black church healing as she accepts and welcomes “the Holy Ghost and fire.”

The best part of this memoir focuses on the impoverished flock and the co-pastors Fredrick Eddington Sr., a former drug addict with schizophrenic tendencies, and his wife Diane, who though legally blind sees life as a war between holy living and hell.  The individual portraits clearly show Julie Lyons cares about the congregation and the pastors yet still enables the reader to see deep into the demons that haunt them as well as her own.  Although the well written memory goes deep into the soul of each person featured, it lacks a sense of neighborhood beyond the vivid description of decay; there is no major look at the impact of the impact of abject poverty, which eats at the souls of the core flocks on causing sinning.  Still this is a fascinating look at a Black Pentecostal Church trying to deliver redemption to its flock.

Harriet Klausner