With all the couch-hopping, silent birthing and Brooke Shields-bashing going on in Hollywood these days, is there a more apt time for J.C. Hallman’s THE DEVIL IS A GENTLEMAN: EXPLORING AMERICA’S RELIGIOUS FRINGE? Nope.

Driven by sheer curiosity after reading philosopher William James’ THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, journalist Hallman either ingratiates or infiltrates several oddball religious movements in the United States – including Athiesm, Satanism, Wiccan and, yes, even Scientology – to see what they’re all about, and in the process, reaffirm or debunk the myths surrounding them – cultish, creepy or caring. As anyone who has read Hallman’s excellent THE CHESS ARTIST (my favorite non-fiction book of 2003) knows, Hallman’s narratives are equal parts travelogue, history and the human experience, written in crisp, beautiful, first-person prose. Like the literary equivalent of a great documentary film, his Everyman demeanor and eye for detail keeps you from becoming detached.

After an unsuccessful bid at getting neighbors of the Heaven’s Gate cult’s house to talk, he attends a meeting of the Unarians, a group whose beliefs center around a UFO (and can be found all over the Unarian-funded Charlie Sheen flick THE ARRIVAL). From there, he participates in a Druid ritual with an underage, would-be actress with a pit bull for a pet, and befriends the hulking Texans who comprise the Christian Wrestling Federation, a burly bunch whose ring matches serve as overt morality plays on the eternal battle between good and evil.

Hallman digs deep into the late Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, getting spooked in their underground maze-like dungeon (spotting a replica of ROSEMARY’S BABY certainly doesn’t help matters), and is granted a face-to-face meeting with LaVey’s 10-year-old son. His none-too-subtle name is Satan, and Hallman can’t resist flashing back to THE OMEN.

We also accompany him as he attends an Athiest convention, sits in on a meeting of Wiccans and stays at a monastery whose monks are renowned for their dog breeding. Artificially inseminating bitches is as close to the sex act as these celibates ever will see. But the chapter on Scientology arguably will be the one for which GENTLEMAN will receive most notice. And rightly so, as Hallman bravely poses as a lost soul genuinely interested in L. Ron Hubbard’s recipe for success. As a result, he – and therefore, we – witnesses the tests, the training films, the suspect technology, the litigious tenacity, the deification of a C-level sci-fi scribe and – as six months’ worth of daily phone messages to Hallman proves – the pursuit of recruitment.

To his credit, Hallman never mocks these people, no matter how brazenly outlandish their beliefs. He lets them speak for themselves, and the results can be surprising. That’s why the Athiests come off freakier than the Satanists. Going on, I knew GENTLEMAN would be fair and well-told, but it also is unexpectedly suspenseful, as monks struggle to help a dog deliver her first litter, and unexpectedly hilarious, as a woman sneezes during a Satanic ceremony and Hallman reflexively responds with a “Bless you!”

Plus, his story is full of info you won’t find in your Trivial Pursuit cards, like the theory that Stonehenge was based on a clitoris, the fact that Jayne Mansfield was a priestess in the Church of Satan and the glossed-over account of Tom Cruise’s precious Hubbard being a painkiller freak and a near-rapist. All this is interspersed amongst a retelling of the life and influence of William James; while I can understand Hallman’s need for a wraparound for his road-trip tales, I was far less interested in the history of a famous dead man when there were truly compelling accounts of living, breathing, anonymous citizens pursuing their not-so-accessible ideas of a higher power.

One thing I find interesting is that in THE CHESS ARTIST, complete strangers bonded over a single game they loved so much that they treated it as a religion. Yet here, he shifts his focus to true religions, and the differences among them keep our world forever divided. I only wish he’d found the time to get to Kabbalah and snake handlers, too. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.