The author John M Hayes has published his latest book A Quest for Meaning: A Memoir from Pit to Pulpit; from Business to Philanthropy.
The novel tells the extraordinary, true story of an awkward, thoughtful boy, who was born into the restricted world of a pit community, who turned to religion as his escape into the wider world.
The poor local schools offered no support for the student, and, when his secondary school teacher, recognising his academic potential, got him an offer of a grammar school place, he declined due to lack of understanding.
From Sunday school to youth clubs his talents as a leader and preacher sparkled, and at twenty-one, he left the colliery world to train to be a full-time pastor.
Inner doubts about the depth of this belief soon surfaced. He was tormented for two decades by feelings of academic inferiority and being a clerical imposter. Nevertheless, he persisted with this studies gaining a degree in Divinity.
He married very young to a woman two and a half years older who became a qualified teacher. Throughout his marriage, he doubted his capabilities as a parent and husband.
Once he qualified, despite this religious torment, he was a storming success as an evangelist, significantly increasing his congregations. But disaster struck in his second big church, in the form of a split between traditionalist and modernists.
With his marriage under stress, he fell for Maggie, a married member of his congregation. He lost his chapel and finally his beliefs, and after further years of trying, his first marriage.
Still searching for meaning in his life he tried politics and eventually discovered Humanism. He also founded a successful business and is now an affluent philanthropist able to enjoy the better things in life, along with Maggie, who he tracked down and married many years later.
As a colloquial autobiography, part written from memory and part from diaries, it is a convincing social study of the mores of his mining community, of family life, and of the extraordinary hypocrisy of the church, and of the life of a pastor in the 1960s and 1970s.
The book is an astonishingly frank and detailed account of the man’s struggles with his faith and his journey to faithlessness.
Speaking of A Quest for Meaning: A Memoir from Pit to Pulpit, author John M Hayes said: “This memoir is the most honest account I could give of a life spent searching for meaning—through faith, doubt, love, loss and ultimately self-discovery.
“I hope readers will find in the book not only an insight into a very different world, but also something of their own journey.”
A Quest for Meaning: A Memoir from Pit to Pulpit; from Business to Philanthropy is now available to purchase from major retailers, including Waterstones and Amazon.
