This Present Darkness

Ashton is a small college town holding two men in trouble who have no idea they are in the same trouble. Marshall Hogan owns and edits the Clarion, the town paper, and keeps running into people who will not answer a question. Hank Busche pastors the little Ashton Community Church and is not wanted in his own pulpit. What is actually happening in Ashton is not a local matter.

The structure is the whole trick: the book cuts back and forth, often inside a single chapter, between what the town can see and what it can't. On the ground it plays as conspiracy thriller, with the Universal Consciousness Society buying up the place, Alf Brummel the police chief in on it, Juleen Langstrat teaching psychology at the college and belonging to the Society, and Bernice Krueger reporting for the Clarion and digging where she should not. Alongside them, unseen, angels and demons fight a literal battle with swords, Tal leading one side against Ba-al Rafar, Prince of Babylon, and a head demon named Lucius. Human prayer is the supply line, and it is shown operating that way — more praying, stronger angel.

Crossway published it in 1986 and it did something Christian fiction was not doing at the time, which was move. It also makes a theological commitment worth arguing with rather than absorbing: spiritual warfare here is territorial, mechanical and visible, prayer is measurable fuel, and the book is confident enough that it reads as a map instead of a picture. The New Age antagonists get no sympathy and almost no interior life. There is a sequel, 'Piercing the Darkness', built around a new case and mostly new people, though some of this book's cast carry over. This one finishes.