TAKING NOTES:

His words hit me right in the gut.

Not because he was a writer for the Los Angeles Times discussing his views about religion, and in particular my brand of faith and all its failings, but because this was a friend of mine, William Lobdell, doing it.

I was pained by it and knew what he was saying came from the heart, even if I didn’t want to hear it.

It also pained me because I knew it wasn’t always this way for him.

Lobdell, a former Daily Pilot editor and former Los Angeles Times religion writer was one of the most devout people I knew in the news business. That in itself was unusual. Most reporters or editors don’t discuss their religious beliefs much in public, including me.

Lobdell changed all of that.

“I label myself a reluctant atheist,” he told me recently. “I’m not there to convince people I’m right. I’m not sure I’m right. I know what it is for me.”

The end result is the culmination of a long, rocky, even appalling journey into organized religion that he chronicled in a first-person account.

Ironically, Lobdell started this journey because he too knew that most journalists avoided discussions about religion, or just weren’t interest in the subject.

And he suspected because of that, the topic just didn’t get very good play in the media.

So he set out to change things. First, he pitched a column called Getting Religion, which ran every Saturday on the Los Angeles Times religion page. That soon developed into full-time job writing about the religion beat. Problem was the religion beat he thought he was going to cover became something very, very different.

Instead of deepening his faith, which was his initial hope, writing about religion and all of its scandals, such as priests molesting children and televangelists fleecing their flocks of viewers, shook him to the core.

“I went into a kind of reverse spiritual journey,” he said. “I did an intellectual analysis of whether faith is real. And that’s always dangerous. I really didn’t want to give up my faith. But I had to admit I just didn’t have it anymore.”

For Catholics and Christians like me, the upcoming Christmas holiday has always been a special time of year. It marks the birth of Jesus, who we believe to be the savior of the world.

Disavowing all of that and treating it all as a fable or old wives’ tale is and would be difficult to do. I can only imagine how hard that was for my friend Lobdell, who believed much the same way as me.

“I waited more than a year to write the column,” he told me. “My emotions were all over the place. I thought that doubt is something that is not talked about very seriously.”

The response to the column was enormous and even, prosperous.

“I thought I’d get a couple hundred e-mails and half would call me Satan and half would call me their savior,” he said. “I got 2,500 e-mails, and 99% of them were positive in their own way. They were either atheists thanking me for seeing the light or Christians trying to convert me or people just thanking me for being honest. It was very humbling.”

He got an e-mail from a priest deep within the Vatican, from many ministers, pastors and priests. He learned that the Fuller Seminary was going to make his column required reading for its students.

That was just the beginning, though.

Lobdell told me his column “started this wildfire on the Internet,” and before he knew it a book agent contacted him, he was flown to New York and within only a matter of weeks a deal with Harper Collins publishing house was born.

With a nice advance from the publisher in hand, he spends most of his days clicking on a keyboard at the Newport Beach Public Library, crafting his non-fiction story of anti-redemption.

The book, which doesn’t have a firm title yet, is due out next year. In the meantime, interested readers can follow Lobdell’s journey on his blog, which will feature lively discussions and the latest news about the intersection of faith and doubt.

I’ll keep you posted when the book hits the stands.

Meantime, I’d like to wish all of you of every faith, creed, belief or non-belief, the merriest and happiest of holiday seasons. And I’ll see you all in the new year.

TONY DODERO is the director of news and online. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 714-966-4608.