The Heretic Hunters: A Parable for Our Time

by Peter Faur

When Church Becomes a Blood Sport, Can Even Love Survive?



When small-town pastor Otto Haller weaponizes the Bible and social media, he rises to power in the once-quiet, right-of-center Confessional Lutheran Church in America. His crusade for doctrinal purity using smear campaigns, power politics, and authoritarian governance fractures congregations, topples institutions, and threatens to unravel the very fabric of the denomination he claims to defend.



At Oberhausen University, theology professor Hillman Gehrke becomes Haller's main target. He challenges the church's descent into fundamentalism and authoritarianism and risks everything to preserve the spirit of inquiry and compassion. As the denomination spirals into chaos, Gehrke's journey intersects with Haller's wife, Martha, a woman seeking freedom from a marriage defined by control and silence. Together, they forge a path toward healing, justice, and love.



Spanning boardrooms, pulpits, classrooms, and quiet moments of grace, The Heretic Hunters is a parable for our time--an emotionally resonant novel that explores the tension between faith and ideology, tradition and transformation. With piercing insight and moral courage, it What happens when pure doctrine becomes a weapon? And can love survive the wreckage of a church at war with itself?

284 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 19, 2025

About the author

Peter Faur worked in St. Louis as a religion reporter and an editor before making the transition to public relations in the early 1980s. His employers and clients have included corporate leaders in telecommunications, brewing, chemical manufacturing and copper mining. He holds master’s degrees in journalism and business administration. Today he and his wife, Pat, live in Phoenix.

Reviews

[Peter Faur]

It's not appropriate for me to review my own book, but I thought you might be interested in why I wrote The Heretic Hunters. I’ve always believed the most treacherous battles aren’t fought only with weapons. They’re waged with words, with rigid doctrine, and with the aggressors’ arrogant belief in their absolute righteousness. The Heretic Hunters is my attempt to tell one such story.

It’s political fiction dressed in church vestments, about power masquerading as purity, and about the quiet courage of those who refuse to play along.

Even as a young boy, before I knew who the notorious Joe McCarthy was, I understood the strategies and tactics of people like him. I saw them play out not in history books, but in black-and-white morality tales on my television screen. Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone was my first education in authoritarian psychology.

In the episode Four O’Clock, Theodore Bikel plays Oliver Crangle, a fanatic convinced that he can rid the world of evil by asking God to shrink every “bad” person to two feet tall. He keeps obsessive records, harasses strangers, and believes he’s on a divine mission. At four p.m., his plan works — but not as he intended. Let’s just say he had to start looking up at people he had been looking down on.

In The Obsolete Man, Burgess Meredith plays Romney Wordsworth, a librarian condemned to death by a totalitarian regime for being “obsolete.” After all, people didn’t need libraries anymore. The state would tell them anything they needed to know. Wordsworth’s quiet defiance exposes the hollowness of the state’s authority and affirms the dignity of moral courage in the face of annihilation.

These stories helped me realize that authoritarianism doesn’t always wear a uniform. Sometimes it wears a clerical collar.

I am a product of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, attending its schools through grade school, high school, and college. Only when I went to graduate school in journalism at Kansas State in 1973 did I study outside the system.

During my senior year of college and beyond, the synod began its pursuit of so-called “teachers of false doctrine.” I recognized the pattern of smear tactics, power politics, and authoritarian governance Rod Serling had illuminated. Professors at synodical colleges, most notably Concordia Seminary in St. Louis but elsewhere as well, were accused of undermining the Bible because they used historical-critical methods to study scripture. The forums they were given to respond were convened by their accusers and were far from impartial.

The controversy escalated until the seminary president, John Tietjen, was suspended. Most of the faculty and students walked out, forming a new institution in exile — Seminex. In retrospect, I believe each suspected faculty member should have stayed and forced upwards of fifty separate heresy trials, but that reckoning is long behind us.

I knew some of the people who were targeted. They were among the most thoughtful, compassionate, and faithful individuals I’d ever met. Whatever theological disagreements existed, they didn’t deserve the treatment they got. The whole episode opened my eyes to how easily institutions can sacrifice conscience for control. The Heretic Hunters is inspired by these events, but it’s not a direct retelling of the story.

Today, as the United States flirts with authoritarianism once again, I felt compelled to revisit this story. Not as a history lesson, but as a parable and a warning. The Heretic Hunters is fiction, but it’s rooted in truth — the kind of truth that Serling understood and fought for.

This novel is for anyone who’s ever been called unloyal for asking hard questions. It’s for those who believe that a strong ethical foundation, not short-term, self-interested transactions, should guide our institutions. And it’s for readers who know that the real battle is not between right and left, but between right and wrong.

If this story resonates with you — if you’ve ever watched institutions sacrifice decency for control, or seen good people branded as heretics for asking hard questions — I invite you to read The Heretic Hunters. Because sometimes fiction is the only way to tell the truth.

It’s available now at bookstores and online retailers.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his first novel, Red Metal, Peter Faur managed to give us an in-depth, nuanced look into a unique world that few of us are exposed to-- the copper mining industry. With his new novel, The Heretic Hunters: A Parable For Our Times, Faur manages to successfully pull back the curtain on another world that you rarely see written about, as we get to see the inner machinations of a fictious branch of the Lutheran church. Faur seems to have a knack for breathing life into these little-seen worlds with compelling characters, intriguing plots, and a way of conveying detailed information on his topic that comes across as fascinating and accessible.

In The Heretic Hunters, we follow the story of how the Confessional Lutheran Church in America (CLCA) becomes fractured when a fanatical biblical literalist member of the church gains traction online by calling out prominent members who do not adhere to the same literal interpretation of the gospel as he does. His unflinching, very vocal calls to weed out the "heretics" resonates with the church's more fanatical members, leading to a monumental rift that wreaks havoc on a local and national scale. As the novel moves along and this seemingly fringe movement becomes more and more mainstream within the CLCA, one can't help draw parallels with our current divisive political climate, hence its subtitle: "A Parable For Our Times."

As a non-religious person, I have to admit I went into this novel with a bit of hesitation, as I would not normally seek this topic out for a read. But with some very likeable characters, an edge of your seat plot (constantly thinking, "How far can this insanity go?") and an unsettling, yet compelling link to current events, I found this to be a highly enjoyable read, which I fully recommend.

[Jeffrey Packer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read. Although the book recounts a tale (based on a real story) involving the Lutheran Church, this is not a book about religion. Rather, it recounts a tale of a self-serving zealot who manipulates the system by creating an “other”, an enemy within, to come to power. Substitute politics for church. Substitute corporate boardroom for church. Substitute any hierarchy for church. The pattern is eerily familiar and sounds all too current. I learned a lot about parochial manipulation. Please read this. It starts a bit slow but then grabs your interest and becomes compelling. In our present world, the more we understand about how charismatic people can manipulate the masses, the better.

[Len · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Heretic Hunters is a book about politics that happens to take place in a religious setting. The details in Peter Faur’s explosive second novel should remind us all that whenever a group of extremists of any kind attempts to force their world view on others, the results inevitably turn in the direction of discrimination, autocracy, and hate. Anyone who has been paying attention to the current state of American politics will see the parallels between the zealots in this well-written and engaging cautionary tale and the ideologues in Washington, D.C. currently breaking down democracy piece by piece. The Heretic Hunters is a not-so-subtle shot over the bow of current affairs.

[Brent Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy to read book, the author uses the politics of the Lutheran church to showcase the political nature of organized religion and the parallels that exist to our current political climate. Relatable characters and good discussion points make this an excellent read and recommended book club book.