Lewi's Journey

"Lewi's Journey is a fictional account of the two men who built the Swedish Pentecostal movement from a renegade congregation based in a crumbling church house and ridiculed for paying credence to such practices as speaking in tongues, spirit baptism, and left-wing politics, into the third largest religious community within Christendom, claiming at its peak a membership of more than 250 million souls worldwide. A humble preacher and failed writer of social novels, Lewi Pethrus introduced controversial reforms and a commitment to social equality through his tireless pursuit of spiritual and moral purity. His relentless energy won the movement thousands of new converts, but none more important than Sven Lidman, a decadent bohemian poet racked by disatrous affairs and a tortuously failed marriage, who was reborn as a prodigal son and the spiritual conscience of the movement, holding swooning audiences in thrall to his ecstatic and brilliantly metaphorical sermons that often recounted his own journey from perdition to penitence. These two men, allied by their faith and fervor, who guided the movement through unprecedented growth, were ultimately to become bitter enemies, through a schism ignited by a mysterious journey to America undertaken by Pethrus during World War II." Lewi's Journey is at once an examination of the conflicts between faith, power, conscience, and sexuality and a hypnotic tale of a moral and spiritual quest for purity and meaning.