How is it that Joseph Pearce, founder of the now-defunct fascist magazine Bulldog and a former member of Britain's National Front, a far-right political party with links to neo- Nazi cells, should be known today as the Catholic biographer of Chesterton, Solzhenitsyn and Oscar Wilde, and more generally, as a leading figure of the Anglo-American Catholic intelligentsia?
In this recently published conversion story, written in a simple, direct style, Pearce provides a brutally honest account of his tumultuous youth, embittered by a misguided yet brilliant intellect. Embroiled in the politics of racial hatred and encouraged by his father, he launched Bulldog, the National Front's fascist mouthpiece, at just 16. Spurred on by fierce passion and encouraged by success, he abandoned his studies two years later to put his writing and speaking abilities entirely in the service of his hatefilled convictions.
Pearce maintains that throughout his youth, he felt attracted towards the good but failed to recognize its true nature. He tells of how selfish love and unruly pride perverted noble patriotism into a poisonous nationalism, degrading a legitimate love of country into bigotry. But even as hatred gained the upper hand, leading him from rally to riot to prison, rare deeds of authentic charity startled his jaded being and somehow prevented his darkened mind from shutting itself out from certain realities.
These random acts of inexplicable kindness pointed to the existence of a rational love. Pearce describes them as beacons of light, shining all the more fiercely the deeper he sank into the pools of hatred swamping his soul. They were mostly simple deeds—money lent, a pint of ale shared—yet they were gratuitous acts proceeding from unexpected benefactors, from men he thought to be at enmity with him.
Ultimately, however, it was grace at work through reading that brought him to the Faith. Pearce's friend recommended Chesterton's The Outline of Sanity, which he read after serving a prison sentence. Imprisonment had, in fact, led him to this powerful giant, albeit somewhat circumspectly. Solitary confinement forced upon him a retreat from the fanaticism of the National Front. He turned to reading, seeking some ease to his suffering as well as an alternative to fascism's focus on big government, which he was beginning to loathe. After all, big government had imprisoned him, denying him free speech. And so it was that Chesterton's political philosophy, with its emphasis on the small, independent and self-sufficient community, captivated him.
At first attracted by Chesterton's distributism, he gradually imbibed his Christian and Catholic thought. This process of gradual assimilation is perhaps best illustrated by Pearce's account of his reading of Chesterton's The Well and the Shallows. Although he purchased the book for a single essay on political theory, he read it cover to cover only to discover that it was an outright defence of Catholicism that confronted his prejudices head on.
"I didn't necessarily agree with everything that Chesterton said," Pearce writes, "[yet] I couldn't help liking the way he said it. Even more unsettling to my own religious prejudices was the uncomfortable feeling that I wanted to like what Chesterton liked, even if I had always believed that I didn't like it."
Pearce's second prison sentence was his true Damascus. In what he describes as "the darkest depths of my desolation," he started fingering rosary beads that a stranger had thrust into his hand during his trial. This beginning of prayer eventually led him to the light: "I began to fumble the beads and mumble inarticulate prayers. It was the first time I had ever prayed. The results were nothing short of astonishing. The eyes of faith began to open, albeit with a vision that was more misty than mystical, and a hand of healing began to caress my hardened heart into a softness which would make it more malleable."
There, in Wormwood Scrubs prison, Pearce began attending Mass.
Not meant as an autobiography, Race with the Devil emphasizes above all Pearce's intellectual and doctrinal development, describing events only as they relate to it. Much ink is spilled on the ins and outs of his political thought and career, especially as relates to his intellectual growth and religious understanding. In an age of great intellectual confusion, this kind of emphasis is certainly noteworthy.
The downside, however, is that Pearce's actual spiritual life is dealt with only in passing. One can't help wondering if this is typical of an Englishman's native reticence to speak about the interior life. Whereas one may reasonably expect an exegetical and spiritual journey from the American Scott Hahn, a former evangelical pastor, from one such as Pearce, a political activist, pride of place may be conceded to the intellectual and political over the spiritual and mystical. Perhaps it is more arduous to delve into the latter, it being still more intimate and associated with the mysterious realm of Grace. Be this as it may, it is disappointing. Much space is given to Pearce's bigotry and his politics, and little to the workings of Grace. Perhaps Pearce's relative reserve testifies to the overwhelming experience of conversion and of the mystery of Grace at work in a soul. He is still ever at a loss for words here, just as he was on the day of his Profession of Faith.
